


Growing Beyond

by Silvestria



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Aldershire Junior Physics Plot Contrivance, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Teachers, Anastasia References, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Kylo Ren has the social skills of an agoraphobic lobster, Mental Health Issues, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pride and Prejudice References, Rey Needs A Hug, Rey is a an awkward blue giraffe, Rey is a biker, Romance, Rose Tico: fairy godmother, Slow Burn, Snoke Being a Dick, You can't spell High School without Musical, everyone hates Hux, everyone is English, inappropriate use of staff email, is it even a story by Silvestria without a ball?, jolly hockeysticks, less meet cute more meet cringe, more snark than angst, much ado about oxbridge numbers, no but seriously this is a slow burn, school rivalry, the British education system is messed up, there will be tropes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-23 05:43:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 44,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14325843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvestria/pseuds/Silvestria
Summary: Rey Smith has landed her dream job, teaching Physics at Alderaan Grammar School but she has not been there a day when she realises that there's something rotten in the Alderaan education system and that something is centred around their rival school, Starkiller Academy and its enigmatic headmaster, Kylo Ren, puppet principal for the shady First Order multi-academy trust.Expect mistaken identities, snarky email correspondence, hockey matches, school dances, marking in coffee shops and far more information about the English education system than you ever wanted to know.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is, the Teachers AU nobody asked for! I've written four chapters so far and so I will aim to update regularly but I am a teacher myself and so if I am swamped at work and I get behind with writing, that might not always be possible.
> 
> There's a good chance many of you won't know much about the English educational system. I've tried to write it in such a way that the plot and setting are explained as needed but please do ask if something is unclear. I've learned so much about the US school system from reading fanfic, so hopefully nobody will mind me dragging you across the pond for this fic!
> 
> Regarding ratings, the rating _may_ go up to M - I'm not sure. However, I am not a smut writer and it makes me feel uncomfortable to write, so while this is going to be totally slow burn and there will be emotional (and some physical) pay-off, if you're looking for explicit smut, you've come to the wrong place. Sorry!! I thought it best to say that here so that nobody is disappointed further down the line. Hope I don't lose too many readers for this.
> 
> And on that note, enjoy! :)

“Our plan for this academic year is a simple one. Consolidate the First Order’s hold over Alderaan’s three secondary schools belonging to its trust, sign the documents relating to our take-over of the failing school, Central Primary, representing our expansion into the primary market and-”

Kylo’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

“And formulate a strategy to bring the last remaining school in the local authority under the First Order’s control, Alderaan Grammar School.”

Kylo’s eyes flickered down as he discreetly pulled his phone out and unlocked it. The message was from Hux.

**In King’s Head prepping for INSET with Phasma. Are you ever going to join us?**

His eyes flickered back up the shiny mahogany table in Lord Snoke’s study, attempting to keep his expression impassive.

“Do you have anything to contribute, Ren?” Snoke asked, his momentary inattention not having gone unnoticed.

“Nothing, my lord,” he replied. “Just wondering how much longer this meeting is going to go on for. Some of us have work to do before tomorrow.”

A fruity chuckle came from his left. “Impatient boy,” said Palpatine, an ex-politician and businessman with an offshore bank account or three, who now somehow found himself Headmaster of the flagship academy in Alderaan, Naboo High School. Kylo disliked him intensely.

“You mean you don’t?”

“That’s what deputies are for!” He raised his tumbler of whiskey in a toast. Maul, a tall, black man in his early 40s who never smiled and ran Mandalore Academy with a rod of iron, raised his own glass and clinked it against Palpatine’s.

Kylo didn’t bother responding. He just stood up. “If that’s all…?” he addressed Snoke directly.

“Not quite, Ren,” said the lord. “Sit down, boy.”

After a moment of hesitation, his jaw working out his frustration, Kylo sat slowly.

“I want good results from Starkiller Academy this year. Your results this summer were disappointing. Very disappointing.”

“They were the best the school’s ever had! A 17% increase on what it was getting before First Order took it over and up 8% on last year’s,” cried Kylo, not being able to help pushing himself forward. “Since you put me in charge two years ago, I have-”

“Yes, yes, you’re so  _ impressive _ . Yet still twenty-three places behind Alderaan Grammar in the league tables,” interrupted Snoke softly, his eyes fixed on Kylo. “They intrude on your catchment area. They take the best students who should go to Starkiller. If Starkiller is to succeed, your results must surpass theirs.”

“Alderaan Grammar is one of the best schools in the country, my lord! With respect, you can’t seriously expect us to surpass them in just two years.”

“And yet I appointed you to do precisely that. Are you saying you are not up to the task, Ren?”

Palpatine and Maul were watching the exchange with great interest. Kylo slowly leaned back into his chair. 

“No. My lord.”

“I want Alderaan Grammar School, Ren. First I want it to fail. Then I want it for the First Order.”

“As do I!”

“Then make sure that this time next year we are having a very different conversation, Ren. Otherwise it will be you who have failed. Dismissed.”

Kylo stood up, grabbed his coat from the back of his chair and stalked round the table. As he came to Snoke’s chair, he paused and looked down. “I won’t let you down, Lord Snoke.”

Snoke’s unnaturally pale eyes stared back up at him, assessing him as they always did. “I’m sure you will not. Not my protégé, not Kylo Ren.”

“Good luck with the first day back, Ren!” called Palpatine, breaking the connection between the two.

Kylo made a rough noise of acknowledgement and escaped the room without another word. Once outside, he stopped on the gravel drive to put on his heavy, black coat and pull up its collar as if in defence against the cold, despite the September evening being balmy and warm. He pulled out his phone to text Hux.

**On my way. Been stuck at Snoke’s.**

The King’s Head was a cosy pub in the centre of town, about a twenty minutes’ walk from the wealthy part of Alderaan where Snoke lived. Kylo didn’t mind. He put in his earphones and shoved his hands in his pockets, setting off down the street at a brisk pace, a dark shadow moving swiftly between the glow of the street lamps.

He found Hux and Phasma in the back room of the pub, having commandeered a large table on which they had spread out papers and their laptops among discarded crisp wrappers and empty pint glasses.

“Fucking finally!” cried Phasma as he wove through the tables to join them. “Was he giving you a ten course dinner or something?”

“I wish. This round’s on me.”

He dumped his coat and bag at the table, went to the bar and returned a few minutes later with beers for the three of them and several different flavours of crisps and nuts. In the meantime, Hux had cleared some space for him.

“What news from the supreme leader?”

Kylo rolled his eyes at their nickname for Lord Snoke. “Results this August weren’t good enough because we didn’t beat the grammar school in the league tables and he needs us to do better this year. Or else.”

“So I’m guessing you’re leading with that in your welcome back speech tomorrow?” suggested Phasma sarcastically. “Very motivational.”

“Fuck that,” muttered Kylo into his beer. He had completely forgotten about his speech.

“You have written it, haven’t you, Ren?” pressed Hux. “It’s rather important. It sets the whole tone for the year, for what new staff think about the school…”

“Enlightening as always, Hux,” he cut him off. “Have you drawn up a schedule for the day?”

Armitage Hux, Assistant Headteacher in charge of curriculum and other dry aspects of school life - anything, in short, which could be expressed in a complicated spreadsheet, loved nothing better than drawing up timetables. He pushed his laptop over to Kylo.

“Here you go. We start at 9am with your welcome speech. That goes on till 9.45 at which point-”

“I’m talking for  _ forty-five minutes _ ? What the hell, Hux?”

“You’ve got a lot to cover. Welcomes to new staff. All the results analysis, which I have prepared for you in a separate spreadsheet and emailed to you last week. The school development plan for the coming year. It will take longer than you think if you do it thoroughly.”

“Fine. Then what? The fire bell goes off to wake everyone up?”

Hux pursed his lips at the jibe. “Then half an hour for Phasma to do her child protection refresher training. Then coffee in the canteen.”

“Highlight of the morning!” put in Phasma.

“At 10.30 we have a special session I’ve organised on biohazard training with an outside company.”

Kylo turned to Hux and fixed him with a blank look. “Biohazard training. For teachers.”

“Sounds shit, right?” said Phasma quickly, who was rather better at reading Kylo’s moods than Hux was. “It’s for health and safety. What to do when a kid throws up, how to clean it up, how to dispose of needles or blood - that sort of thing."

“Do we really need some guys in hazmat suits to come and tell us at great expense what to do if a student has a nosebleed?” asked Kylo, his voice soft, his hands clenching into fists under the table. “Do you think our staff are  _ morons _ ?”

“I just thought that-”

“You are not paid to  _ think _ , Hux!” bit out Kylo and took a few deep breaths. “What’s after lunch?”

“Tutor team meetings then I’ve arranged for a series of teaching and learning collaborative sessions.”

“Cancel them,” said Kylo. “No-one gives a shit. After the tutor team meetings make it department time.”

Hux opened his mouth to argue but Phasma sighed and said, “Do it, man. Kylo’s right. Plenty of time for that sort of thing later on. People need preparation time in their departments.”

“If you think that’s best.” Hux grabbed back the laptop and made a big show of deleting several lines of text from his schedule.

Kylo slowly relaxed his hands, picked up his glass and drained the last of his pint. “I need to go. It seems you both have everything under control.”

“Getting an early night, Ren?” wondered Phasma as he stood up. She had a glint in her eye that suggested she knew that he hadn’t yet written his speech and therefore exactly why he was leaving.

“Something like that. See you both in the morning.”

He walked home, earphones back in and hands shoved once more into his pockets. Having reached his flat, he flicked the lightswitch, dropped his bag to the floor, hung up his coat and flung himself backwards onto the sofa, relishing the silence and the solitude after the noise of the pub and Hux’s inanities. 

How other people actually managed to live with other people he simply didn’t understand. People were awful.

But biohazard training for teachers? Trust Hux to come up with something so ridiculous. His shoulders shook and his lip twitched. Tomorrow would be fucking hilarious. He almost wished there was someone he could share the stupidity of it with.

* * *

Alderaan Grammar School. Rated in the top five schools for A Level results in the national league tables for the last ten years. Founded in 1587 by Queen Elizabeth I and now one of the few academically selective state schools left in the country. Admitted girls to the Sixth Form for the first time in 1992 and throughout the school eleven years ago. Current headmistress: Ms Leia Organa of the great Skywalker dynasty of educators.

All these impressive facts passed through Rey Smith’s mind as she swung herself off her motorbike, parked round the back of the school on the first day of the autumn term, and locked her helmet to the handlebars. She looked up at the imposing redbrick Victorian building in front of her and took a breath as she walked round to the front entrance.

Over the doorway was the school’s Latin motto:  _ non ignorantia sed scientia. _

“Not ignorance but knowledge,” murmured Rey, giving the inscription a nod. She did not understand Latin herself, but she had memorised the motto and its translation before her interview back in March and it wasn’t the sort of thing you forgot, not when it was shortly followed by getting your dream job.

Once inside, Rey headed for the science labs. She left her coat and bag at the desk she had already made her own in the last few weeks of the summer holiday. She hung up her freshly ironed labcoat, running her hand almost protectively over its gleaming white material. Without the labcoat, she was just Rey, twenty-three years old, and nervous as hell about starting in a new school. But when she put the labcoat on the following day and faced her first class of new students, she would wear it like armour and her plastic safety spectacles like a mask and she would become Miss Smith, Teacher of Physics and perfectly capable, thank you very much.

Leaving the science staffroom, she went to find her pigeon hole and collect her planner, flicking through its blank pages and marvelling at it. So very soon, it would be filled with lesson plans, reminders and mark sheets for students who were currently just names on a database system. In the staffroom, she bumped into the Deputy Head, Poe Dameron, sticking schedules for the day in pigeon holes. 

“Nice to see you again, Rey,” he greeted her with a warm smile. “Hope it’s all going well so far.”

“It’s brilliant!” she replied with a wide smile. “Everything’s so - so  _ different _ from my previous school. It’s all so clean and organised and - honestly, you have no idea how glad I am to be here!”

Poe laughed, a big, belly laugh. “And we’re glad to have you on board with us. Sounds like the place you were at before wasn’t so great.”

Rey wrinkled her nose. “It was a dump. Behaviour was really bad and their discipline policy was awful. And senior management just didn’t care.”

“Bad luck,” he murmured sympathetically. “Well, you’ll find things very different round here. Our kids are really great and when there are problems, Leia and I have things locked down pretty tight. You’ll get all the support you need. This is only your second year teaching, right?"

“Yes, I was an NQT last year. Not that I really got much mentoring.”

Poe shook his head. “Mentoring new teachers is so important. If you’re not going to do that, honestly, why are you in the job in the first place? Makes me so mad. You coming to the meeting? It’s almost 9.”

Rey nodded and they set off together for the hall and the start of the training day.

“Actually, you’re really lucky you picked AGS to apply to. We’re the only local authority controlled school left in Alderaan; all the rest belong to this multi-academy trust, the First Order, and trust me, you do not want to work for them.”

“I know,” said Rey, grimacing. “I live with Finn, you know, who came here from Starkiller Academy. He’s told me all about them.”

Poe’s face lit up. “You’re Finn’s friend! Of course you are; that’s how you came to apply in the first place. I remember now. And yeah, he was lucky to get out of their clutches and find a job here. Once you’re in with them it’s practically impossible to teach in Alderaan and not be in their power.”

“You make them sound like the mob!” grinned Rey, her eyes darting everywhere as they walked down the main corridor, past display boards advertising musical clubs, sports teams, the dinner menu, student artwork and photos from school trips.

“You’re not far off. Anyway, you’ll hear enough about all that, I’m sure.” He pushed open the door to the hall and gestured for her to precede him. They separated after that as Poe made his way to the front of the room, where his colleague, purple-haired Assistant Head Dr. Holdo, was connecting a laptop to the overhead projector. Rey hesitated on the threshold, nervous once more at the sight of so many unfamiliar faces, for she had not yet met most of the other teachers. Her palms began to sweat and she had to take several calming breaths. Surely Finn had arrived by now…

A hand stuck up in the air a few rows back and then her best friend and foster brother had stood up and was beckoning to her to join him. She rushed forwards with a relieved smile and sat down gratefully in the seat he had saved for her.

“You made it!” he exclaimed. “I started panicking when I didn’t see you when I arrived. I mean, you should definitely have got here before me.”

“I went to the lab and the staffroom first,” she explained. “Picked this up.” She indicated her planner with a touch of pride in her voice.

“Good for you, Peanut.” He nudged her. “I’m so glad you’re here and you’re out of that dump you were at last year.”

“Same for you. Another year free of Starkiller.”

He gave an exaggerated shudder. “Never going back to that hellhole. Hey, you know what my friend who’s still there texted me to say they have to do today?”

“No, what?”

“Biohazard training for two hours.”

Rey snorted inelegantly. “Biohazard training? What the hell? Are they building a nuclear bomb over there?”

“I know, right? I mean, I wouldn’t be even slightly surprised if they were but-”

“Shh. It’s Leia.”

The room was falling silent as the headmistress mounted the podium to begin her opening speech.

“Welcome to Alderaan Grammar School and to the start of a new academic year. It’s lovely to see you all back and to welcome the new faces among you. I hope you all had a wonderful summer. We will start by reviewing the fantastic GCSE and A Level results that came out this August before we move onto our aims and objectives for the coming year.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Secondary school - school for children aged 11 (Year 7) to 18 (Year 13). Also called high school.  
> INSET - a day of staff training when no children come to school.  
> A Levels - exams taken by 18 year olds at the end of their school career.  
> GCSEs - exams taken by 16 year olds.  
> Sixth Form - the last two years of secondary school (Years 12 and 13). Students study for A Levels.  
> NQT - Newly Qualified Teacher, someone in their first year of teaching after their training.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you think and come and find me on tumblr at: [misscrawfords](http://misscrawfords.tumblr.com/).


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey tries to make friends with another teacher. It doesn't go well.

Rey was exhausted.

She was a week into her first term at Alderaan Grammar and the summer holidays already felt a lifetime ago. She had been up late every night filling in her planner with names of students and making seating plans. She adjusted lesson plans for classes who were more advanced and smarter than the classes she had had at her previous school. On Thursday, she stayed late to hold try-outs for the Under 14 girls hockey team she was coaching as her extra-curricular responsibility before pouring over training schedules over Chinese takeaway until her eyes swam.

Friday morning, she had vowed to Finn that she would get an early night, but that was before Poe sent an email inviting everyone to celebratory end-of-the-first-week drinks in the local pub after school. How could she not go and miss an opportunity to get to know her new colleagues better? After all, her euphoria at how much she _loved_ her new job needed some outlet and it had been a very intense week.

And so she had found herself in the George and Dragon for one drink… and then a second… and then several more and at some point they ordered food and somehow she didn’t get home till almost midnight, pushing her motorbike slowly along the road, her shoulder bumping against Finn’s as he wheeled his bicycle next to her, both making an effort to walk in a straight line.

She loved her colleagues. Admittedly, she still hadn’t even talked to most of them and she couldn’t remember the names of everyone she had talked to but it was enough to know and like the ones she saw immediately around her. It was wonderful being in the same school as Finn, of course, but they hardly saw each other during the school day. As for the Physics department, it consisted of three other teachers, all middle-aged men. Rey didn’t mind this, though, as they were all lovely and keen to support her in a way nobody really had before. Besides, on the second day, she met Rose Tico, the Physics lab technician. Rose was a similar age as her, had been at the school for three years already, and had outright squealed at learning she was the new Physics teacher.

“You can’t imagine how excited I am that you’re joining the department,” she had cried. “I mean, they’re all great guys, the other teachers, but it’s like having three dads and, well, you can have too many dads, right? The jokes…!” She pulled a face and made a slicing motion across her neck.

Rey had smiled but privately she had disagreed. When you didn’t have any father at all, the prospect of being surrounded by three sounded amazing. Nevertheless, she and Rose had latched onto each other and sat together at lunch, joined by Finn who had somehow never spoken to her before.

“Teachers and the technicians…” Rose had explained, “we don’t really mix. Can be a bit lonely, being a techie.”

“That’s stupid,” said Rey. “You’re every bit as important as we are. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be able to do any experiments in my lessons.”

So she had made sure that Rose had come out with them on Friday evening, which she eagerly agreed to do. In fact, if Rey did not meet a single other person in the school beyond her department, Rose and Finn and occasionally sharing a smile and greeting with Poe, she would be perfectly happy.

Saturday morning, she slept in and by the time she stumbled into the kitchen in her pyjamas to get some cereal, Finn had already left for the first rugby match of the year against Mandalore Academy. Sun streamed into the sitting room and Rey slumped on the sofa, relishing the first real moments of peace and relaxation since the start of term.

She quickly decided that it was too nice a day to spend inside, however, and after breakfast, she went for a run round the local park. Back at home, she opened her planner to get a start on the following week’s lesson plans but she could not settle. This felt too much like all the bad habits she had got into the previous year of holing herself up indoors all weekend and allowing work to take over her life. This was a new year, a new start, a new Rey. She might have to do work but she didn’t have to stay at home to do it, especially not on such a lovely day.

She packed up her books and laptop and made her way into the centre of town, eschewing her bike for once in favour of a walk, considering how good the weather was. Soon autumnal gloom would be setting in and she was determined to make good use of the sunshine while it lasted.

Alderaan was small cathedral city, barely worthy of its title, with an attractive centre of cobbled streets around the cathedral green. The grammar school’s original site was close by, even if it had moved to a larger sight a little further out in the nineteenth century.  Rey walked past the original building, now used for cathedral administration and a place for the choir to practise, and gave it a knowing nod. She was a part of the city’s heritage now. Getting the job at the grammar school had given her a purpose and a connection to something worth being allied to for the first time in her life. She had never cared much for anywhere she had lived or worked before, but she felt she could really belong in Alderaan.

A sunny Saturday brought the tourists out to play but Rey avoided the common tourist traps and went to a place she had discovered the previous spring and been back to several times since. The cathedral cafe might be attached to the city’s most distinguished attraction, but it was also tucked away in the cathedral crypt and very poorly advertised. It was rarely full, especially on a day when most people would want to sit outside or at least be near a window.

Rey got herself a mug of coffee and a scone and found her favourite place to work, the cafe’s one sofa in the innermost room, pushed up against the rough, stone wall. She plugged in her laptop, kicked off her shoes and stretched out on the sofa, congratulating herself on having found a good spot. It was cool down here, welcome after she had grown warm from walking in the sun.

Although the outer room was reasonably full, only two other tables in this room were occupied. At one, a pair of elderly ladies were gossiping in hushed voices over large pots of tea; at another, a tall, young man was hunched up over some papers. He must have arrived only a few minutes before Rey, because she was still getting out her books when a waitress came through to the back area, calling out, “Sweet chilli chicken panini!” and the young man leapt up to claim it.

Rey managed to work reasonably solidly for about forty-five minutes, though both the other tables were rather distracting in their own ways. The cafe had no music so the old ladies’ conversation, although quiet, was nevertheless often audible and Rey could not help occasionally tuning into the apparently scandalous and inappropriate lives and relationships of Anne and Janet’s respective children. Meanwhile, the young man seemed to be struggling with whatever he was working on. He frequently let out a huff of irritation or flung himself back in the wooden chair that seemed too small for him, running his hands through his wavy, black hair as if to rid himself of some source of frustration.

Therefore, when Rey eventually got up to get another coffee, she passed close to his table and could not help glancing down at whatever he was working on in what she hoped was a subtle manner.

They were essays, some typed, some handwritten, which he was correcting using an elegant fountain pen with green ink.

“You’re a teacher!” Rey blurted out, before she could help herself.

The young man raised his head and stared at her as if she was speaking a foreign language. He had the largest, darkest eyes she had ever seen.

“I mean, that is, so am I,” she continued, inwardly cringing at how awkward she sounded. “Sorry.”

“Right,” said the young man after another long pause. He had an appealingly mellow voice. And then, when she continued to stare, “We don’t have to have a conversation just because we’re both teachers. It’s a common profession. Don’t feel obliged to stay. You can go and get your coffee now. I need to work.” A faint flush was beginning to rise on his neck as he glared at her.

“Okay, thanks for nothing.” Rey rolled her eyes, flushing too, and hastened out of the room towards the counter. By the time she had ordered, waited and collected her coffee, however, embarrassment at being dismissed by a relatively attractive man she had accosted out of the blue for no good reason that she could rationally explain had turned into annoyance. She might have been awkward, but she had been friendly. He had been _rude_!

When she returned to her sofa, she stopped by his table again. He looked up at her again. “What now?”

“Look,” she began more firmly than she had spoken before, “I said I was sorry for disturbing you, but I was just trying to be nice. Teacher solidarity, right?”

“Sure, if you say so,” he replied, still sounding as if he had no idea why she was talking to him. Rey was also beginning to wonder that herself but felt that having initiated a conversation she had to see it through.

“So, what do you teach?”

He moved his fountain pen off the pile of essays and held the top one up so she could read the title.

_Discuss whether Hamlet is a coward or someone driven by his conscience._

“English then,” Rey surmised. “Nice!”

He nodded once and his eyes briefly flickered over her. “You?”

“Physics.”

His eyebrows rose. “That’s unusual.”

Rey’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“There aren’t many female Physics teachers. You were probably hired to look good on their diversity reports.”

He spoke in such a measured way that it took a moment for his words to sink in and when they did, Rey’s jaw dropped. “Okay, that’s bullshit,” she snapped, her heart pounding.

He shrugged. “Not really. It’s a well-known fact. And you’re probably not even a real physicist. If you were, you’d be working in industry and earning twice as much. Most Physics teachers are actually biologists forced to teach Physics because of the shortage of properly qualified Physics teachers. Especially women. Women tend to prefer the soft sciences for some reason.”

“You sexist troglodyte!” spluttered Rey in disbelief. Her mug of coffee shook in her hand. She swallowed. “I have _always_ wanted to be a teacher! I _care_ about my job! I _love_ my students! I bet you only fell into teaching because you couldn’t think what else to do with an English degree!”

The young man blinked at her. “That’s ridiculous,” he muttered. “You don’t know anything about me.”

Rey took a deep breath. She was wasting her time here. She couldn’t think why she’d even spoken to this pretentious prick in the first place. “Okay, you said you were busy. Have lots of fun marking all those long essays.”

She stomped away from him, slammed her mug of coffee down on the table, shoved all her books and laptop back in her bag in a hurry, and crossed back across the room, abandoning her drink, still hot. She no longer wanted to work there.

Pausing before she left the back room, she suddenly turned round and called out in a low but distinct voice to the young man who had turned in his chair and was watching her with undisguised curiosity and animosity, “I bet your students hate you! And buzz off, Anne!” she added, seeing that the two old ladies had long since paused their gossip to watch the more interesting show going on before their eyes.

She sped out of the cafe, running up the steps and blinking into the sunshine, still feeling his dark, surprised eyes following her long after she had left the crypt.

Finn was home from his match and sprawled out in front of the Xbox by the time she stormed back into their flat.

“Hey, what’s up, Peanut?” he asked, pausing the game when he saw her face.

She threw her leather jacket over a chair and flopped down next to him. “Met a jerk in the cathedral cafe. Pass me a controller; I want to blow something up.”

Finn dug out the second controller from down the side of the sofa, saved his own game and booted up a new one for two players.

“What happened?” he pressed, once Rey was sitting forward, hunched over the controller and entirely engrossed in running through a forested landscape wielding a laser sword and swiping unnecessarily at trees that got in her way.

“Nothing really,” she muttered, bringing down an entire tree and chopping it into bits as gold sparks shot across the screen before she continued, “There was this bloke sitting in the cafe and I realised he was a teacher because he was marking essays so I talked to him and he was well rude.”

“Why’d you talk to him in the first place?”

“Dunno,” replied Rey, doing a triple somersault onto a high rock, jumping up and down several times and then sawing a boulder in half. “Guess I felt the teaching love and wanted to share it. He didn’t.”

“Sorry. I guess not all teachers are like the ones at AGS. He didn’t deserve you.” Finn laughed suddenly. “You know, he was probably from Starkiller. They’re all dicks there. What did he look like?”

“Tall,” replied Rey and was then distracted by a hooded man in a mask appearing behind her. She did several largely pointless backflips before charging at him. “Dark hair.”

She didn’t want to add that he had been attractive in an unconventional way. Strange that she should have found him so, but she had. Until he had started speaking more than two words at a time, that is. Then the appeal had significantly decreased.

“Tall and dark. Really narrows it down, Reyna.”

“Teaches English. Oh _fuck_.” She jabbed hard at her controller, waving it around as it really was her laser sword.

“You are so shit at this game, Peanut. You have literally no technique.”

“Then help me, dammit. We’re meant to be a team and you’re still pratting around at the temple.”

“I got lost in the stone tunnels. Okay, coming to get you. Just hold him off. Try to, you know… try to…”

“Do this?” Rey slashed violently at the masked enemy and succeeded in wounding his arm.

“Ow. That hurt,” said her antagonist’s tinny voice, deadpan.

“Hell yes it did!”

“Wait, Rey - don’t let your guard down! Oh damn.”

A dialogue box appeared on the screen.

_You have been captured by the Dark Prince. He is taking you back to the Black Castle for interrogation._

“Fuck my life!” cried Rey and threw down the controller with a sigh.

They sat in silence for a while and Rey rested her head on Finn’s shoulder.

“Well,” said Finn eventually, “I don’t know who he was. A tall, dark, English teacher. I mean, that could be practically anybody. I don’t even know who half the English teachers were at Starkiller. Out in the Games department, you don’t mix so much with the academic staff.”

“It’s okay, I don’t really care. I shouldn’t let it get to me. He was just a jerk and I’m never going to see him again. It’s just…”

“What? What did he say?” 

She shrugged and snuggled closer to him. “Just stuff. It doesn’t matter.”

“Well, you ever see him again, you let me know and I’ll kick his ass for you. Got it?”

She smiled up at him. “Got it. Love you, Finn.”

“Love you too. Always.”

It really didn’t matter. That’s what she told herself. If she didn’t talk about it perhaps it would go away. It was nothing more than bad luck that he’d happened to have hit on two of her greatest insecurities in quick succession just after meeting her. Fortunately, the chances of their ever meeting again were slim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the kudos and lovely comments. I'm so glad people are enjoying the story so far! I'm excited about this chapter (for obvious reasons) and I'd love to know what you think! :)
> 
> Tumblr: [@misscrawfords](http://misscrawfords.tumblr.com/)  
> Twitter: [@silvestria13](https://twitter.com/silvestria13)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo discovers a new interest in local Physics departments. Rey tries to find out what is so bad about Starkiller Academy.

“Mitaka!” called Kylo Ren, striding into the school office at Starkiller Academy on Monday morning with the customary flair that he wore like a cape.

“Sir?”

“Pull up everything you’ve got on the Physics department.”

If Mitaka was surprised by the request, he didn’t show it. Kylo came round behind him to look at the computer screen over his shoulder.

A few taps on the database and Kylo had the personal details of the four members of the Starkiller Physics department in front of him. His eyes skimmed over the information quickly.

“All male? We have no female Physics teachers?”

“No, sir. But all bar one of the Biology department are women?”

Kylo didn’t reply immediately but tapped his finger on the desk in thought. Mitaka exchanged quizzical glances with his colleague, Lusica, across the room.

“Did any apply?”

“Any what?”

“Women. To teach Physics,” Kylo clarified, a touch of impatience in his voice. “Try to keep up. When the school became an academy two years ago, did any _women_ apply?”

“I don’t think the system stores that information after a year. Data protection and-”

“Never mind.”

“Sorry.”

Kylo swept back round the desk as if he was going to leave and then he stopped.

“Mitaka, can you access the files on the other First Order schools in Alderaan?”

“A limited amount, yes,” Mitaka replied cautiously.

“Good. Get me as much as you can on the Physics departments at Naboo High and Mandalore.”

"Yes, sir.”

While Mitaka accessed the database, Kylo prowled round the small office and Lusica hastily began typing nonsense into an email in order to look busy.

“Only very general information is available about teachers at the other schools.”

“Names?”

“Here.” Mitaka turned the computer monitor round so he could see the results.

Kylo bent down and let his eyes skim over a row of names. “This is Mandalore?”

“Yes.”

Four full time teachers and one part time. One woman. Sarah Poltwhistle.

“No further details such as date of birth or title?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“Unfortunate. And Naboo High?”

Mitaka brought up another list. Three teachers. Again, just one woman. Samantha Cooper-Ellis.

Kylo stared at the screen a few minutes more and then turned to go. “That’s all, Mitaka.”

“Anytime, sir.”

He swept out of the office without another word just as the bell for morning break sounded. As soon as the glass door had crashed closed behind him, Lusica stuck her head round her monitor and hissed, “What was _that_ all about then? Do you think he’s planning to fire someone again?”

“Ours not to reason why, Lucy,” replied Mitaka in a lofty tone to conceal the fact he was just as confused as she was.

Meanwhile, Kylo weaved his way through the stream of students pouring out of lessons for break, his imposing figure and rank making his progress easy. He slammed the door of his office behind him, ignoring his PA trying to tell him that Hux was looking for him. He picked up his stressball and flung it at the wall several times.

Was the girl from the cafe a Samantha? Was she a Sarah? It was possible. Could her surname actually be Poltwhistle or Cooper-Ellis though? _That_ seemed unlikely somehow, though most people simply stuck with the name they were given at birth, no matter how little it suited them. Not everyone had had his luxury. He flung the little rubber ball with a bit more violence.

Of course, there was no reason to suppose the troglodyte girl, as he had taken to calling her in his head after that rather memorable insult, taught at either of the First Order’s other schools. There were plenty of other schools in neighbouring villages and small towns whose teachers could perfectly reasonably come into Alderaan on a Saturday. There was even St Corellia’s, the big private boarding school twenty miles out in the countryside. His old school. And of course there was always Alderaan Grammar, but he preferred not to imagine she taught there.

He sank back into his deep, leather-backed chair and tossed the stress ball up into the air and caught it again, his anger subsiding into a familiar level of frustration. Why did he want to find the girl from the cafe so much? She had barged up on him for no reason with an entirely undeserved perky smile, not once but twice. She was a girl of extremes - either stupidly happy or quick to anger. He wondered what she was like in the classroom; such emotion would not serve her well - if nothing else, she would be exhausted by the end of every lesson. Idealism and caring so much – such qualities were not sustainable. He did not rate her chances of staying long in the profession.

She was quite attractive though, he could not help reflecting, in the same way the sun was. Dazzling, full of burning energy and really rather weird when you got up close. What was up with the three buns? And was she actually a biker or did she just wear that creased brown leather jacket with all the patches on because she was some kind of millennial hipster wannabe? Not to mention the warm northern accent, unexpected so far down south.

Anyway, it hardly mattered. He’d put his foot in it by telling the truth, proving how ridiculously sensitive she was. She thought him a jerk now; well, she wasn’t wrong. He threw the ball at the wall again just as Hux pushed open the door without knocking and ducked as the ball bounced barely a foot away from his head.

“Missed,” snapped Kylo with a glare.

“You’re like a bloody Year 8 with ADHD,” retorted Hux. “You’ll take an eye out one day.”

“You could wear an eyepatch. It’d be an improvement.” Kylo leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “What do you want?”

“I’ve been trying to get hold of you all morning. It’s about the girls’ tights.”

Kylo opened one eye, squinted at Hux doubtfully and then closed it again.

“Some of the girls have been coming in either not in tights at all or in nude colour tights because of how warm it still is, but the school uniform regulations clearly state that when wearing the winter uniform girls should wear black tights of a minimum of 40 dernier. Now, the issue seems to be that-“

“Hux,” interrupted Kylo without opening his eyes again, “are these girls in school?”

“Yes obviously, or they-“

“Are they attending lessons?”

“Yes, but-“

“Then I could not care less about their tights. Make a decision, Hux, I don’t give a fuck. Or tell Phasma to deal with it if it becomes a pastoral issue.”

“Hayley Whittaker in Year 11 is saying that wearing a uniform infringes on her human rights of self-expression and the tights are, and I quote, ‘a tool of patriarchal oppression’. She’s getting quite a following.”

Hux’s tone was disapproving and Kylo snorted slightly.

“Give her a lunchtime detention if you think it necessary – better still, send her to the library and make her read an actual book on human rights. Oh, and put her name forward for the charity committee. If she’s so fond of social justice, she can start campaigning for things that actually matter - while obeying the rules of the school she is enrolled to attend.”

“That is… quite a good idea,” said Hux, reluctantly impressed. “Though I think we should consider suspension if her insubordination doesn’t subside.”

Hux always went straight for the worst punishments. It made dealing with genuinely serious offenses rather difficult. Kylo wondered if he could suspend _him_ merely for constantly grating on his nerves...

“It will. She’ll rant about it online somewhere and be over it by the end of the week.”

He could not believe they were still talking about tights. Sometimes he really hated his job.

Fortunately the bell went for the end of break before Hux could come up with any other inane problems to bug him with.

* * *

“So, how do you feel about the first match?” Rey asked.

It was Thursday and she had just finished the first hockey practice with her team. She was walking back to the PE department with the two girls who had volunteered to help her clear up, Steph and Rhiannon.

Rhiannon shrugged. “Pretty good. I mean, it’s hard to say how we’ll do, right, since it’s the first match of the season. But I think we’ve got a chance, Miss.”

“I just wish it wasn’t against Starkiller Academy,” sighed Steph.

“Are they a particularly good team?” Rey wanted to know, always curious about the rival school.

“They were last year. They had this one girl playing attack, Daisy, and she basically obliterated all of us. Sanjaana was in goal but she only blocked two goals that match.”

“She was so amazing.”

“Well, you’re amazing too!” said Rey. “Time for payback, right?”

Steph and Rhiannon glanced at each other and laughed. “What are you suggesting, Miss?”

Rey wrinkled her nose. “Nothing dodgy. Just go out and play your best and make sure you win! That’s all!”

“Yeah right,” scoffed Steph, “no big deal!”

“Hey, a bit of optimism please! We got this, Miss!”

After they put the bibs and balls away and Rey locked up the kit store, she asked them, “Anyway, what’s Starkiller like? Do you know anything about it beyond the U14 hockey team?”

“My sister Flick goes there,” said Steph. “She’s in Year 11 and she remembers it before it was an academy. She likes it much better now. They’re really tough on discipline but, like, that’s good. She actually learns stuff. Before, all the teachers were really bad and no-one cared.”

Rey raised her eyebrows. That didn’t exactly fit with the kind of things Finn had said. Then again, he had only known the school after it had been taken over by the First Order.

“Yeah maybe…” Rhiannon didn’t seem so sure. “I know a guy there from the bus and he says they’re really mean. Phones confiscated, working in silence, you do the smallest thing or make some random mistake and you’re in detention and it goes on your record. It’s a bit unfair. Like, sorry, Miss, but everyone messes up sometimes. It doesn’t mean you deserve it to go on your school record.”

“I guess it depends on what you did,” replied Rey neutrally. She was more interested in finding out what the girls thought of the school than engaging with them in a moral debate about suitable school sanctions.

“There’s this one teacher,” continued Rhiannon, “Mr. Hux, who’s a real - uh, anyway, he’s really harsh apparently.”

“I’ve heard of him!” said Steph. “This one time he gave Flick’s friend Olly a Saturday detention because he caught him chewing gum. A Saturday detention! That would never happen here.”

“Oh my God, that’s so stupid.”

“Okay,” put in Rey, who wanted to shut down the trash-talking of other teachers, even ones at another school, and feeling a bit guilty for encouraging it, “I get the picture. You better go and get changed. I’ll finish up here. Thanks for your help, girls!”

“Thanks, Miss! See you next week!”

* * *

“Tell me about Starkiller’s Mr. Hux,” said Rey to Finn that evening. “Would he give a boy a Saturday detention for chewing gum? Because that’s what someone on my team said.”

Finn snorted. “Probably. I doubt he has a social life ‘cause nobody likes him so spending Saturdays at school terrorising kids who’ve basically done nothing wrong would probably be his idea of a great weekend. I definitely heard of Saturday detentions being a thing when I was there.”

Rey poked at her spaghetti. “I don’t get it. Starkiller’s results are shooting up, I’ve heard people say it’s the most efficiently run school in the city and these should be good things. Yet you were desperate to get out of it and Poe basically makes the sign to ward off the devil whenever it comes up in conversation. What’s up with it?”

“Well, you know who else were really efficient at what they did and got quick results?”

“Who?”

“The fricking Nazi party! Look, Rey,” continued Finn when Rey started protesting at the comparison, “I hated working there because I was constantly being micromanaged. I teach PE for God’s sake! It’s not exactly rocket science. You actually teach rocket science so you get what I’m saying. You have to deal with all the marking and reports and predicted grades and getting them into Oxbridge and all that shit. End of the day, I just teach boys to kick balls around a field. There was no need for them to be breathing down my neck the way they were. So many rules! So many ways to get into trouble - and that’s just the teachers. Also, and I really mean this, the senior leadership team are genuinely unpleasant people. There’s Phasma who is like what would happen if you crossed Brienne of Tarth with the Terminator, Hux’s nickname is - and this is true, I swear to God, ‘Ginger Hitler’ and it’s accurate too, and Kylo Ren is the kind of creep who lives in his mum’s basement and thinks Snape is misunderstood and then somehow becomes headmaster of a school, fuck knows how.”

“And yet you decided to leave!” smiled Rey, shaking her head in amusement.

“I know. Weird, right?”

They ate in silence for a few minutes and then she continued, “Okay, so that explains why you wanted out and that’s totally fair, but why does Poe hate them so much? He’s never taught there.”

“Ask him,” replied Finn. “I think it’s political and I try and keep out of that side of thing. Like I said, I’m just a PE teacher. Doesn’t really affect me.”

She wrinkled her nose. “End of the day, politics affects all of us. No-one can afford to be neutral.”

He poked her. “Eat your pasta, Hillary. Like I said, you want to know the deets, talk to Poe directly.”

This was exactly what Rey decided to do. She caught Poe in the canteen on Monday and tried to quiz him, but lunchtime was not a good time for a deep conversation. Instead, he told her to come to the George and Dragon on Friday and they could have a proper chat about it. The week seemed to pass very slowly after that as Rey waited until Friday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Year 8 - 12-13 year olds. (7th grade)  
> Year 11 - 15-16 year olds. (Sophomore year/10th grade)  
> Oxbridge - shorthand for Oxford and Cambridge universities, Britain's most prestigious institutions, the equivalent of the Ivy League.
> 
> For those wondering, I sort of imagine Alderaan situated in a fictional county in the south of England, sort of between Surrey and Hampshire. I have various cathedral cities like Ely, Winchester or Canterbury in mind for Alderaan.
> 
> A bit of a filler chapter but some necessary character development. This is a slow burn - they're not going to meet every chapter... But next chapter Rey will actually venture onto Starkiller land for the hockey match!
> 
> Thank you so much for the reviews and kudos. It really means a lot to know people are enjoying the story and gives me inspiration to write more! Also, I made an awful graphic for the story: [behold my terrible graphics skills](http://misscrawfords.tumblr.com/post/173393400540/i-made-a-crappy-graphic-for-my-teachers-au-fic).


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey walks into the lair of the enemy. In other words, it's the hockey match against Starkiller Academy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for all the exposition at the beginning of the chapter! It's necessary for the setting and I hope it isn't too bad.

After school on Friday saw Rey, Poe, Finn and Rose cramming themselves into a booth in the George and Dragon with a fortifying round of beers and crisps to see them through the discussion to follow. Finn had come because Rey had made him, determined to snap him out of his apathy about the wider impact of where he worked and Rose had come because, well… Rey suspected she was there because she liked Finn.

“I’m not saying I just want to hang out with him because he used to be a pro Rugby player,” she had insisted earlier in the week. “But you have to admit it’s very cool that he is. I never had any reason to talk to him before but he’s your friend and now I’m your friend too so I’m not going to pass on the opportunity, know what I mean?”

“You should ask him for his autograph,” Rey had responded, only half joking.

“ _Could_ I?”

Rey had shrugged. The premature end of Finn’s career playing rugby for England thanks to injury remained a sore point but she suspected a bit of female hero worship wouldn’t be such a bad thing for him.

Poe bought them all drinks and they settled down.

“Okay,” he began, “you’re here because you want to know exactly why First Order is such a terrible organisation. Am I right?” He addressed them all but it was Rey he was really looking at.

“Yes. I get that Finn hated working at Starkiller because he didn’t like the leadership. But I feel like this goes beyond that because I hated my last school and bad leadership is hardly unusual in schools - no offence.”

“None taken!” retorted Poe with a grin.

“And if I’m going to stay in Alderaan I need to understand what’s going on. Tomorrow is my first hockey match and it’s against Starkiller. The girls understand their opponents better than I do at the moment.”

“Right, that’s fair. Finn, you will know more than I do about specifics regarding Starkiller so feel free to interrupt.whenever.”

“Eh, I guess I want to know what the big deal is too,” shrugged Finn. “If I’m being honest, I just left for personal reasons. But I wouldn’t mind feeling justified in hindsight!”

“Trust me, you will.” Poe took a swig of beer. “So, flash back time. It’s fifteen years ago and Alderaan had four secondary schools - the grammar school, Naboo High, Mandalore Street School and St. Thomas’ High, all in local authority control. Academies were just getting off the drawing board under the Labour government, influenced by Lord Vader.”

“Lord Vader?” interrupted Rose.

“Anakin Skywalker, former education secretary under Thatcher - one of the most influential ones we had, got promoted to the Lords and subsequently weaselled his way into Blair’s inner circle. Academies were basically his brain child for improving education. Thatcher was out before she could adopt the idea but Blair took the bait.”

“Wait,” interrupted Rey. “This Anakin Skywalker - like, I have heard of him, of course. But isn’t he…”

“Leia’s father, yep.”

“Right.” They all took a moment to assess the situation. “Go on,” Rey continued. “So Leia’s father is responsible for the academy scheme. I pretty much already knew that though I hadn’t really consciously thought about the fact that Anakin Skywalker is Lord Vader is Leia Organa’s father.”

“The real mystery here is why everyone has so many names,” complained Rose into her cider. “It makes everything far too complicated.”

“Welcome to the Skywalker dynasty!” said Poe. “Take a drink every time you discover a new one where you weren’t expecting it! Anyway. Naboo High was one of the first schools in the country to voluntarily convert to an academy. This guy, Palpatine, poured a load of money into it because his niece had gone there once upon a time or something. It seemed to be a success - smartened up with a new uniform, new sports centre, donations to the library, all that shit. But about five years later, along comes Lord Snoke. An old business crony of Palpatine’s – I don’t know what exactly - and by this time, mind, we are starting to realise that academies aren’t all they’re cut up to be - taking power away from teachers and local councils and into the hands of businesses and so on. Snoke takes over Mandalore Street and rebrands it as Mandalore Academy, replaces practically all of its staff almost overnight and within six months, he takes over Naboo High from Palpatine. Oh, Palpatine’s still nominally in charge there as Headmaster, but he’s in partnership with Snoke or a puppet - honestly, I don’t know what goes on in their board meetings. Snoke creates the First Order, a multi-academy trust.”

Rey was listening attentively, frowning slightly. “Okay, I’m with you so far. This is just standard business practice for academies, right? I guess I’m not old enough to really remember what education was like before them. What’s wrong with taking mediocre schools and making them better? I don’t mean to play devil’s advocate but what exactly is the problem?”

“The problem is lack of accountability, Rey. It’s privatisation by the back door. Snoke is getting government tax money in order to do whatever the hell he likes in these schools. And Starkiller - St. Thomas’ as it was - didn’t even have any choice. After Naboo High and Mandalore were taken over, St. Thomas’ became the dumping ground for the kids who failed to get into AGS or either of the smart new academies. Nobody wanted to work there - sorry, Finn, but you know it’s true - and then OFSTED came along, graded them Inadequate and told them they had to convert to an academy or close down. So Snoke swoops in, just like he’d clearly been planning to do all along and does just what he’d done with Mandalore. So now he has three out of the four schools in Alderaan. You disagree with his business practices and unless you pass the 11+ to get into AGS or your parents are rich enough to send you to St. Corellia’s, you’re stuck.”

“And are Snoke’s business practices so bad?”

“Of  _course_ they are!” cried Rose suddenly. “I just looked him up - do you want to know what his salary is as CEO of First Order is? It’s over £150,000 and you can bet he doesn’t pay his teachers more than the normal rate and let’s not even consider the support staff! Honestly, fuck capitalism.” She drained her bottle.

“Well, shit,” said Finn, expressing how they all felt as they considered their status and their salaries.

After a few moments of depressing silence, Rey spoke again. “So Alderaan Grammar is the last bastion of traditional state education in this town. I think I’m starting to understand.”

“And you can bet First Order don’t like that,” agreed Poe. “We’re next on Snoke’s hit list.”

Finn nodded. “They’d joke about it in the staff room at Starkiller, about taking over the grammar school and sticking it to us.”

“But that’s not going to happen, right?” said Rey, looking between them all. “Alderaan Grammar is one of the top schools in the country! It’s never not been rated Outstanding by OFSTED so nobody is going to force it to convert and I can’t believe Leia would just hand it over to Snoke.”

“No, she won’t,” Poe said, “but frankly it’s not that simple. The government wants all schools to become academies within the next few years and there will be financial incentives to do so. Financial penalties for those that don’t. School finances are already so stretched…” He trailed off with a shrug. “It’s tricky, but Leia will keep fighting. And so must all of us.”

“Anyone else think it’s ironic,” said Rose suddenly, “that the daughter of the founder of the academy system is one of the principal objectors to converting her school to an academy?”

“Oh, it’s ironic alright.”

* * *

 _Into the clutches of the enemy_.

This was what Rey could not help thinking as the minibus containing the Alderaan Grammar boys and girls U14 hockey teams with their coaches pulled into the gates of Starkiller Academy the following morning. It was a crisp and clear but cold autumn day - perfect for sport in fact. Rey was looking forward to supporting her girls but she was also keen for the opportunity to see Finn’s previous school and perhaps get a sense of what the First Order stood for.

Since St. Thomas’ had ceased to exist and turned into Starkiller, the entire school had been torn down and rebuilt with sleek, modern, chrome buildings - mostly shiny and black with touches of red. Compared to the grammar school with its Victorian main building and a jumble of secondary buildings that had appeared over the decades as they were needed, Starkiller looked impressive.

Impressive but soulless, Rey decided, as she could not see a single sports bag left out over the weekend on the playground or football stuck in a tree. They drove round to the sports fields at the back and the students were tipped out to find the changing rooms and get ready to warm up.

Rey, huddled in her blue AGS tracksuit to keep warm, wanted to explore and used finding the bathroom her excuse to wander off. She skirted the astroturf, smiling vaguely at the knots of dedicated parents who had already arrived to cheer their children on and were clustering around a marquee where PTA volunteers were selling tea, coffee and bacon sandwiches.

The main building was open and she entered quietly, walking down a corridor decorated in the Starkiller black and red until she reached the main atrium and saw the sign for visitor toilets. Having availed herself of the facilities, she wandered back into the atrium and over to a cabinet displaying the school’s trophies. They were good at sport, she realised and began to feel somewhat worried for her team.

“Hello?” said a voice behind her and Rey spun round to see a tall, glamorous woman dressed in a grey trouser suit, wearing heels that made her even taller. “Are you lost?”

“Hello! Sorry, I’m from Alderaan Grammar with the girls hockey team. I was just admiring your wins.”

The tall woman approached the case. “Yes, we are good.” She sounded smug. “But perhaps this will be your year. You never know!”

“My girls are good too,” Rey retorted, tilting her head to look up at her and refusing to be intimidated. She felt very aware that she was in a rather muddy tracksuit and trainers with no make-up next to someone who was so immaculately put together she could have been a model.

She got a faint smile for that. “I’m sure they are. I’m Ms Phasma, Deputy Head of Starkiller Academy.” She held out a hand.

Rather surprised, Rey shook it. “Rey Smith, I teach Physics at AGS. And coach the U14 girls, obviously.”

Ms Phasma raised one eyebrow. “Ray? That seems appropriate for a Physics teacher.”

“You know, nobody has  _ever_ made that connection before!”

Now she laughed. “I deserve that!”

Rey laughed too and wondered how it was happening that she was joking around with the Deputy Head of the Starkiller. This did not fit with Finn’s description of the school or of Phasma. Except the Brienne of Tarth comparison - that was startlingly accurate.

“What does your motto mean?” she asked abruptly, nodding to where it was emblazoned in gold at the top of the display case.

“ _Vis me liberabit_? ‘Strength will set me free’.”

Rey snorted. “Quite a motto! Good thing it’s not in German. What? It’s pretty sinister,” she added as Ms Phasma was giving her an odd look.

“It’s just… one of my colleagues said exactly the same thing when Lord Snoke first decided on the new motto. Nobody else seems to have made that connection.”

Rey didn’t know what to make of that or how to continue the conversation. She had never been good at small talk and Phasma intimidated her no matter how she pretended she didn’t. Perhaps she had been rejoicing too soon after one brief moment of shared humour. “I should get back to my team, warm them up.”

“Of course. Nice to meet you, Ray.”

“You too, Ms… Phasma.”

Rey scuttled off down the corridor as quickly as she could, inwardly chastising herself for her awkwardness. She felt less like a confident teacher on a visit to another school and more like a naughty schoolgirl, caught truanting. Nor was it helped that she was obliged to call Phasma by her formal title but she was just ‘Rey’. She should have introduced herself as ‘Miss Smith’ but who  _did_ that? She should have… she should have…

No time for berating herself. Her team were kitted out in blue and white and ready to hit the pitch. Rey grabbed her hockey stick and led them out for warm-ups, finding her energy and enthusiasm when she needed it.

By the time the match kicked off, Rey had put her encounter with Phasma behind her and turned into the supportive coach she needed to be for her team. The warm-up had got her blood going and now she kept warm by dancing around on the side of the pitch with a keen eye for the technique of the players, trying to pick up on anything she could use to give praise at the end of the match or to help them improve in their next practice. By half time the girls’ teams had drawn 4-4. Rey jogged over to the refreshments marquee for a polystyrene mug of tea before coming back to a team huddle. If she was honest with herself, they were doing better than she had expected after seeing the Starkiller trophy cabinet. They could win this game.

The second half started and some of the spectators who had been watching the boys’ match drifted over to the more exciting girls’ match. Rey’s hair was coming down in a wild mess and her throat was hoarse from screaming encouragement when she looked straight across the pitch and saw an unpleasantly familiar face standing next to Ms Phasma on the Starkiller side.

It was the English teacher she had crossed swords with in the cathedral cafe a few weeks before. Now that he was standing up, she could fully appreciate the size of him, dwarfing even Ms Phasma. He was dressed all in black again, muffled in a long trench coat and scarf like Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, and he was staring straight at her. Rey stilled and straightened, taking her weight off her hockey stick and, seeing him still looking at her, she raised one hand and gave him a small, sarcastic wave across the pitch. There was a moment of complete silence in which Rey held her breath, wondering how he would react, before he removed one hand, encased in a black glove, from his pocket and raised it in an unmoving salute.

A whistle blew and Rey dragged her eyes away from the ghoulish presence on the other side of the pitch. The match was over: Starkiller had won 7-6. Disappointing, but AGS had fought well and it was hardly a crushing defeat. Rey turned away from the pitch with one backwards glance across the expanse of astroturf and went to console her team.

At least now she knew he was a teacher at Starkiller. Of course he was. Another reason to avoid the place.

On the other side of the pitch, Phasma turned to Kylo and said curiously, “You know her?”

“Who? Oh, her. No, not really. I bumped into her once. Why, who is she?”

“Her name’s Ray Smith. She teaches Physics at AGS.”

“Her name’s Ray and she teaches Physics?”

“I know. Sounds fake, right?”

“She probably changed it. Ray Smith. Nobody is born with that name.”

Phasma rolled her eyes. “Takes one to know one,  _Kylo Ren_.”

“Fuck off,  _G Phasma_. How do you know her?”

“Caught her admiring our trophies earlier. She objects to our motto, incidentally.”

Kylo scrunched up his face. “So she has good taste. It’s a terrible motto. I’m surprised none of our Jewish families have complained yet, actually. One good consequence of nobody understanding Latin these days.”

“Well, that’s - Oh, good morning, Mrs. Holt. Archie played so well today! You must be so proud.”

Phasma turned away from him to speak to a parent and Kylo was able to stare across the pitch again to catch a sight of the girl, but she had disappeared inside the changing block with her team.

Ray. Her name was Ray. Ray Smith. It was a stupid, fake-sounding name but somehow the realisation that he was not alone in having changed his name warmed him to her more than anything else could have done. It made him curious to know more about who she was and where she had come from. Why he was so interested, he hardy knew. There had just been a  _something_ about her, something that had stuck in his mind long after she had rushed out of the cafe. Perhaps it was because she had come to him initially, perhaps it had been her passion or just the fact that she had called him out, straightforward and direct without any of the sarcasm that characterised so many of his interactions with Hux and Phasma.

So of course she had to be a teacher at Alderaan Grammar School. His mother’s school. It was just so typical. With a swirl of his coat, he turned on the spot and stalked off back to the main school building, blanking a parent who wanted to speak to him. Let Phasma deal with her. He had spent quite long enough at school for a Saturday morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously I've changed the origins of academies a bit to fit this universe but the principles of it and the reasons they are objecting to them are basically accurate. The lack of accountability and power of multi-academy trusts and the salaries of their CEOs is a very real issue in England at the moment. Support your teachers, folks! As I understand it, the system in the US is as messed up as it is here if not more. Of course, Poe has his own perspective and there are other ones...
> 
> OFSTED - the school inspection organisation. Universally hated and feared. Grades schools from Outstanding down to Inadequate. Think Umbridge.  
> 11+ - exam taken in the final year of primary school to get admission to grammar schools which are academically selective. Now optional now that there are very few grammar schools.  
> U14 - Under 14 i.e. a sports team of 13 year olds.  
> PTA - Parent Teacher Association.  
>  _Vis me liberabit_ \- Rey and Kylo object to its similarity to Arbeit Macht Frei (Work will set you free) written above Auschwitz Concentration Camp. There's an Easter egg in the Latin mottos of both Starkiller and AGS...
> 
> You may have noticed the new additional tag. Despite what I said in Chapter 1, turns out I'm going to need to challenge myself at some point as the plot as I conceive it now requires there to be some at least semi-written out smut!! 
> 
> Thank you for the reviews and kudos. Find me on tumblr if you ever want to chat: [@misscrawfords](http://misscrawfords.tumblr.com/). <3


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey gets given an opportunity at AGS; Kylo needs a distraction from Snoke.

It was over a week after the hockey match against Starkiller Academy. Rey was doing some desultory marking in the Physics office during her lunch break, picking at her pasta salad, when George, her head of department, poked his head round the door.

“Got a minute, Rey?”

Anything to distract her from Year 10s who could not spell “amperes”. She drew up a stool for him.

After a few minutes in which George asked her how she was getting on and Rey was suitably enthusiastic about her first few weeks in the job, he brought up the real reason he had wanted to speak to her.

“You were probably involved in the Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge at your last school, weren’t you?”

Rey nodded. “I remember that it happened. It was at St. Corellia’s last year, wasn’t it? I remember we sent a team, but I didn’t go. We didn’t win.”

“Yes, AGS won. We win most years, to be honest. And this year it’s our turn to host it.”

“Here? Wow, that’s cool!”

George smiled indulgently. He really was like a friendly bear, Rey sometimes thought. “Yes, it is. And I was wondering if you would be interested in organising it.”

Rey’s eyes widened. “You want _me_ to organise the Junior Physics Challenge? I’ve only been here a month!”

“It’d be a lot of work, mostly rather dull, but it’s not difficult. It will be a good first step in organising events and trips.”

“I would love to!” She absolutely beamed at him. At her previous school she had never been given any responsibility and she was longing to prove herself. “What will I have to do?”

“Oh good, I was afraid I would have to do it again and I’m ready to hand over the baton to someone with fresh ideas… You’ll need to book the hall for the day - I’ll have to look up the exact date but it’s a Wednesday at the beginning of December - you’ll get half a day off timetable. You’ll need to find guest judges and prizes and sponsorship and you’ll need to invite all the schools in Aldershire. Tedious stuff but the kids love it so it’s worth it. The theme this year is forces, so you can do a lot with that.”

Rey’s mind was already running ahead in planning creative and interesting interpretations of “forces”. “I’m on it! I’m _so_ on it. Leave it to me!”

George heaved himself off the stool and briefly squeezed her shoulder before leaving her. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say. I’ll email over all the details and let me know if you need any help.”

“Will do.”

Rey put her lunch away in a desk draw and her Year 10 marking on top of another pile of not yet marked example sheets. She had fifteen minutes before afternoon registration to start looking for sponsors and she intended to do as much as she could.

In fact, most of the organisation was relatively straightforward. George had lists of who they had approached when they had hosted the competition before and most were happy to be involved again in a such a good way of promoting Physics to children. The most tedious job was emailing the Physics departments of all the schools in Aldershire (including her old department, which felt slightly awkward) to get confirmation of their attendance.

She should have known it was going too well. Starkiller Academy - of _course_ it would be Starkiller - did not have any contact details for its individual departments on its website. For any enquiries, the website invited her to contact the Assistant Head, Armitage Hux.

“Great,” Rey muttered to herself. “Emailing Ginger Hitler… what could possibly go wrong?” 

 **From:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
 **To:** amh@starkiller.org  
 **Subject:** Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Dear Mr. Hux,

I am writing to you about the Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge, held this year at Alderaan Grammar School on Wednesday December 5th. Please could you ask your Head of Physics to get in touch with me at rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk to confirm their attendance. 

Kind regards,

Rey Smith (Miss)  
Teacher of Physics, Alderaan Grammar School

Well, nobody could object to that email, even the pickiest of pedants. She hit ‘send’ and waited for a reply.

And waited.

After a week, during which time nearly all of the other schools had replied to her and organisation was progressing nicely, she had still heard nothing from Starkiller. Her feelings towards the school and Hux especially were not the pleasantest.

“Who does he think he is?” she ranted to Rose. “Does he think he’s so above us he can’t even be arsed to reply to me?”

“Probably,” replied Rose frankly. “I mean, this is Starkiller we’re talking about. Or perhaps Hux passed on the message and it’s the Head of Physics who’s being slow.”

Rey shook her head. “I’m emailing again. And I’m going to get shirty on them.” 

“Ooh, look at you being badass!" 

 **From:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
 **To:** amh@starkiller.org  
 **Subject:** Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Dear Mr. Hux,

I emailed a week ago about the Junior Physics Challenge, this year held at Alderaan Grammar School, as you can see in the message below. I have not yet heard anything from your Head of Physics. If you do not wish your school to take part, please let me know as soon as possible. Or will we have the pleasure of welcoming the Starkiller team in December? 

Kind regards,

Rey Smith (Miss)  
Teacher of Physics, Alderaan Grammar School

“You get a tad bitchy at the end,” Rose said, reading over her shoulder. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

It had rained persistently every day that week and she had burned her hand on a Bunsen burner on Wednesday. “I’m feeling a tad bitchy.”

She pressed ‘send’.

And waited.

Oxbridge and medicine university application deadlines were approaching and for several days Rey did not have time to think about the Junior Physics Challenge. Accompanied by a soundtrack of rehearsals for the school’s musical production of _Anastasia_ going on in the Music department whose windows were near the science block, Rey proof-read personal statements and provided information for references as best she could when she had only been teaching the students since September. On Friday, however, with the early applications sent off and everyone able to breathe a sigh of relief after a very stressful week, Rey checked up on the replies she had received over the last few days.

Nothing from Starkiller.

“I am _through_ with them,” she exclaimed to Rose as she looked up from her inbox. “Screw Hux. Screw Starkiller. I would just say we’ll leave them out of the whole thing except it’s unfair on the kids who might want to take part. It’s not their fault their administration is terrible.”

“ _But royalty is royalty, one always has to wait_!” sang Rose, who had been half dancing round the office with a tray of wires to the sound of a major chorus rehearsal.

Rey rolled her eyes. “OK, Barbra Streisand. Honestly, I don’t know how you stand hearing all these songs over and over again. I loved _Anastasia_ as a child but I’m ready to never hear _Once Upon a December_ ever again.”

“Nooo, don’t say that! I’m going to play in the band - you have to come and see us! AGS musicals are also the best; you should have seen _Grease_ last year! It was _so_ good.”

Rey thumped her head on the table as after a pause a piano could be heard starting up again and soon a chorus began singing _The Press Conference_ for about the fifth time that lunchtime. “Fine. I’ll come and see you play in the band if you just stop singing along with them now.”

As Rose squealed with pleasure and tried to ask her in a subtle way if she thought Finn would come too, Rey turned her attention back to her computer.

“I’m going straight to the top, over Hux’s head. This is a matter of principle now. I am going to get a response from Starkiller if it’s the last thing I do. Now, what’s his email?”

She opened the Starkiller Academy website.

“Whose?”

“Kyle O’Ren’s. The headmaster’s. And if it gets Hux in trouble, all the better. Huh.”

“What?”

Rey squinted at the website and shrugged. “It’s not Kyle O’Ren. It’s _Kylo Ren_. Never seen it written down before. I thought he was Irish. Now I just think he’s got a weird name.”

“Weird name for a weird guy? Have fun roasting his deputy, Rey; I need to go set up for the practicals this afternoon.”

She disappeared out into the adjacent classroom and Rey opened up a new email, typing rather more forcefully than usual.

 **From:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
 **To:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
 **Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Dear Mr. Ren,

I am writing to you because I have emailed your assistant, Mr. Hux, twice now about the Junior Physics Challenge that is going to be held at Alderaan Grammar School this December and received no acknowledgement of my email or had any contact from your Head of Physics. You can see my two emails below.

It is frustrating not to receive any response from your school when I am simply trying to do something nice to inspire students with a love of Physics and I would like Starkiller students to be involved. If you do not wish them to come to the competition, it would be a courtesy to let me know. I am left with a poor opinion of your administration and the usefulness of your website that does not allow for direct contact with your Physics department.

I look forward to hearing from you very shortly. 

Kind regards,

Rey Smith (Miss)  
Teacher of Physics, Alderaan Grammar School

“Kind regards - and _fuck you_ , Mr. Ren.” 

She pressed ‘send’.

* * *

The phone rang and, suppressing a sigh, Kylo lowered the baguette he was about to take a bite from.

“Ren.”

“Lord Snoke is on the line, Mr. Ren,” said his PA.

Of course he was. Because this was just what a day needed that had started with double Year 8 reading _Romeo and Juliet_ and failing to understand even the most basic aspects of the play and had continued with chasing after the final early entry UCAS forms to sign off.

“Put him through.”

Kylo sat up straight. Snoke could not see him down the telephone but it was an instinctive response.

“Kylo Ren. I want to hear your Oxbridge numbers.”

“Twenty-one for Oxford and nine for Cambridge,” said Kylo, who had been staring at applications and references so much that week that he did not need to look it up.

For a moment Snoke was silent and Kylo barely breathed.

“Twenty-one is satisfactory but tell me, why are there so few applications for Cambridge?”

“I don’t know, my lord. I suppose the students didn’t want to apply there so much this year.”

“You _suppose_? Last year, there were thirteen applications to Cambridge.”

Kylo clenched his fist under the table. “It’s a different year group. Different students. Different priorities.”

“Priorities that seem not to involve aiming high to elite institutions. May I remind you that Cambridge regularly surpasses Oxford in the league tables. Hardly what I would expect from an ambitious school like Starkiller Academy.”

“You know, Snoke, it is possible to get a good degree from universities that aren’t Oxford and Cambridge. You can’t make students apply somewhere they don’t want to.”

“Yes, you know all about the worth of a degree from Oxford, don’t you, _Benjamin Solo_?”

His voice was barely more than a crackle down the line but every word was distinct and hit Kylo like a poisoned dart. His grip on the telephone receiver was so strong his fingers ached with the effort. He swallowed.

“I spoke out of turn,” he whispered, crumbling and cringing in his executive chair. “I’m sorry the numbers aren’t what you wanted, Lord Snoke.”

“They are not. I do not care about superficial differences between students and year groups. Students are guided by their teachers and it is up to you as Headmaster to set the tone for the school. If they are not aiming high, if they are not applying to the prestigious universities you want them to, then that is a fault with the leadership. Young people need guidance. Your students should look to you. They should look to you _as you looked to me._ They will thank you for it later.”

“Yes, Lord Snoke.” He closed his eyes briefly.

“You forget yourself and all I have done for you. Do you think you would be where you are now without me?”

“No,” said Kylo after a pause, in case Snoke had not yet finished speaking.

“You would have been _nowhere._ ”

He did not reply.

“Repeat it, Ren.”

“I would have been nowhere.”

As he spoke, Outlook pinged as a new email arrived in his inbox. Kylo, too miserable and focused on the telephone conversation, ignored it.

“And yet here you are - Headmaster of Starkiller Academy in your early thirties. I have put you on the path to greatness - not even your grandfather Lord Vader achieved so much so early. But now it is all up to you. Of course, if you want to throw away all my hard work-”

“I don’t want to do that.”

“I’m glad you see sense. Now tell me, Ren, do you know what Alderaan Grammar’s numbers are this year?”

“It’s only the deadline today. How am I supposed to know that?”

“Find out. I hope for your sake that it is lower than yours.”

Kylo opened his mouth to say something - anything - about how unfair that was. Alderaan Grammar was a prestigious, academically selective school with a centuries’ old reputation whereas Starkiller Academy was a two year old unselective institution built from the ashes of a failed school. How could they possibly compete? Snoke, as so often, wanted the impossible.

But there was a click and the line was disconnected. Kylo gently replaced the receiver and passed his hands over his face in exhaustion. Then he picked up the nearest thing to hand, a jam jar containing several pens and a pair of scissors, tipped the stationery out and hurled it across the room where it made a satisfying shatter against a bookcase.

Feeling slightly better, he picked his baguette up again and turned his attention idly back to his computer and the new email that had come in while he had been on the phone, trying to get himself back under control. It better not be another email from that damn Year 11 girl’s mother about discrimination because of her tights. He would not be responsible for his response to _that_.

**R Smith - FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge**

He almost dropped his baguette. Then, when the roaring in his ears and the pounding of his heart allowed, he clicked on the email.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oxbridge - shorthand for Oxford and Cambridge, Britain's most prestigious universities. Equivalent of the Ivy League. Deadlines for applying to them are earlier than other application deadlines, in mid October rather than mid January. The early deadline also applies to medicine and vet med applications.  
> Personal Statement - the part of a university application where the student writes about themself and why they want to study their course.  
> UCAS - acronym for the university admissions process. Rey as a subject teacher will be helping students applying for Physics with their UCAS form and may be helping her head of department write references for them. Kylo as headteacher will have to sign off on all references (if not write them all depending on the school's policy) and be the final checker of every application.
> 
> I'm sorry for missing a week of updates. Rather like Rey before the UCAS deadline, I was drowning in exam marking last weekend! But I'm back with a chapter that kickstarts the next part of the plot... 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has reviewed or left kudos. I appreciate it all. :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inappropriate use of staff email.

**From:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**To:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Dear Mrs. Smith,

I have forwarded your email to Mr. Harrison, our Head of Physics and you will be hearing from him shortly.

I appreciate your insight into the workings of my school and its failings so much. Please do email again if you have any further suggestions.

Best wishes,  
Kylo Ren (Mr.)  
Headmaster

When Rey had said she hoped she would be hearing from Mr. Ren very shortly, she had not expected a reply to land in her inbox within fifteen minutes, just as the bell went and she was grabbing her bag for afternoon registration.

She scanned the reply, her eyes widening as she did so. She even had to do a double take to read it again, instead of just glancing at it on her way out of the office.

“Unbelievable! Rose, he’s trolling me!”

But Rose wasn’t in the room and she was speaking to herself. She went off to teach her afternoon lessons in a distracted state.

* * *

“Get me Hux!”

“Mr. Hux is teaching Year 12, sir.”

Kylo glared at his PA. “Well, get him to me the moment he finishes.”

It had been a rotten day so far but thanks to Rey Smith (Miss)’s email, he had been provided with the perfect excuse to use Hux as his personal punching bag, which always had an uplifting effect.

He slammed the door to his office again and flung himself into his chair to wait for a reply from Rey. She would reply, he knew she would. She would not be able to resist the provocation.

By the time the next double period had ended, there was still no reply. She must be teaching, Kylo thought gloomily. In the five minutes between lessons, Hux appeared at Kylo’s door in a sulk.

“What is it, Ren? You know I have double Year 9 last thing on a Friday. Much as I’d enjoy not having to deal with them at this point, if I’m late they may all have jumped out of the window to shoot up in the park.”

For once, Kylo resisted the temptation to make a jibe about most people wanting to jump out of a window when faced with the prospect of spending over an hour in a small room with Hux. He slammed a print-out of Rey’s email on his desk in front of his assistant. 

“Explain to me why I received this email.”

Hux picked up the paper and held it at a distance between finger and thumb. An expression of distaste crossed his face.

“Oh yes, I remember this. Did I not deal with it? I’m sorry, Kylo, it must have got lost in my inbox.”

“Twice?” He wanted to rub Hux’s indifferent insincerity off his stupid face.

“What can I say? I have many demands on my time.”

“Piss off, Hux. You’re only an Assistant Head. And sort out the website. It’s bloody humiliating getting emails like this from some junior teacher at Alderaan Grammar School.”

“What are you going to do about it? Report me to Snoke?” Hux sneered. “Because you got shown up by a nobody from Alderaan Grammar?”

Kylo stood up. “ _ We  _ got shown up. Get the  _ fuck  _ out of my office.” He was suddenly very tired. He picked up his stress ball and flung it in the direction of Hux’s head. It bounced off the wall near the door, making a photograph of the previous year’s leavers tremble on its nail.

Hux dodged the ball and sidled out of the door, shooting the headmaster a look of disgust, which Kylo felt all the way to bones.

Hux was ruthlessly efficient in so many matters, he reflected once he had calmed down, but at what cost! He was such an asshole. The only reason his students got good marks in his classes was because they were too terrified of failing. He was the sort of person who became a teacher for the power and that was a bad reason if ever there was one. For several minutes Kylo fantasised about what he would do if he had full control over Starkiller’s staffing instead of having his every decision having to be approved by Snoke. Then the bell went again and he grabbed his copy of  _ Rebecca  _ and stalked off to teach Year 13, hoping that there would be an email in his inbox when he returned. Woe betide anyone who had not done their homework that afternoon.

When he returned to his office after tearing into an annoying student who thought he was being original and was just being pretentious, he was delighted to see an email from R Smith in his inbox among other administrative dross.

**From:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**To:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Dear Kyle O’Ren,

Thank you so much for your reassurances and for forwarding my message to Mr. Harrison.

You are particularly generous in inviting me to make suggestions on how to improve Starkiller Academy. What an honour! I will definitely take you up on this, but I will need some time to gather my thoughts, for the list might be a long one.

I do hope you have a lovely weekend.

Kind regards,  
Rey Smith (Miss)  
Teacher of Physics, Alderaan Grammar School

“And no more emails till Monday!” thought Rey as she closed Outlook and switched off her laptop. 

She kept to her resolve, made at the start of the year, not to check her work emails during the weekend, but for the first time that term, her fingers itched to log in and see if Mr. Ren had replied. Why she was so curious, she could not quite say. Except that he had thrown down a challenge that she was utterly unable to back down from, professionalism be damned.

* * *

_ Friday evening _

**From:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**To:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Dear Ms Smith,

Thank you for your email.

I look forward to hearing your suggestions. We will naturally adopt all of them immediately.

I hope you also have a good weekend.

Best wishes,  
Kylo Ren  
Headmaster

 

_ Sunday morning _

**From:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**To:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

Kylo Ren

 

_ Monday _

**From:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**To:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Dear Kylie Ron,

So headteachers don’t have lives at the weekend? I knew it!

Here’s a preliminary suggestion - get a new motto that doesn’t sound like a Nazi slogan.

Kind regards,  
Rey Smith (Miss)

 

**From:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**To:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Dear Mr. Smith,

The motto was Lord Snoke’s decision. You should probably take it up with him. Surely it is more inspiring than yours though -  _ non ignorantia sed scientia _ . What a nothing phrase.

Has Mr. Harrison contacted you?

Best wishes,  
Kylo Ren

 

**From:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**To:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Dear Kale Rice,

Yes, Mr. Harrison emailed me this morning and I have been able to continue with my planning.

If I ever see Lord Snoke, you can be sure I will take it up with him.

Kind regards,  
Rey Smith (Miss)

 

**From:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**To:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Dear Rev. Smith,

So one of my staff is competent! This is a great relief.

I hope everything is going to plan. Let me know if I can be of any help.

Best wishes,  
Kylo Ren

 

_ Tuesday _

**From:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**To:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Dear Crylo Rain,

Here’s another suggestion - hire more competent staff, then you won’t be surprised when one of them actually does their job.

Kind regards,  
Rey Smith (MISS)

 

**From:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**To:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Dear Lady Rey,

Suggestion noted - but something else you will need to take up with Lord Snoke.

Why are you so obsessed with your title? Are you desperately broadcasting your single status in a last ditch attempt to get a husband like a secondary character in an Austen novel?

Kylo

 

**From:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**To:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Do you even have work to do as headmaster? Snoke decides everything and you just sit around sending unprofessional emails at all hours of the day.

I’m not obsessed with my title - but if I don’t put it in my signature then nobody knows what to call me. It’s all right for men.

Rey

 

**From:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**To:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

You could always use Ms…?

Apologies for the delay in replying. I was teaching a lesson. One of the many aspects of a headmaster’s job.

Kylo

 

_ Wednesday _

**From:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**To:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Teaching a lesson! In a school! Quick! Call the press! This is unheard of!

Calling myself Ms wouldn’t make it any easier for people to know what title to use in an email. And I was born a Miss. I don’t see why I should ever have to change my title, even to Ms. 

Rey

 

_ Thursday _

**From:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**To:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Rey, 

I was at a headteacher’s conference yesterday. I was wondering - what would you change about your school? 

Kylo

 

**From:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**To:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

I would move the music department to the furthest end of the school site so I don’t have to hear them rehearsing for the school musical all. the. damn. time. when I’m trying to work in the office.

Apart from that, we’re perfect.

Rey

 

**From:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**To:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

You’re not a fan of musicals? What a shame. Nevertheless, I think you’d appreciate [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-lF106Dgk8)  from Starkiller’s latest musical.

Kylo

 

Rey clicked on the link automatically and burst out laughing as she saw what it was.

 

_ It's astounding  
_ _ Time is fleeting  
_ _ Madness takes its toll  
_ _ But listen closely...  
_ _ (Not for very much longer)  
_ __ I've got to keep control

 

Then the percussion came in and the volume suddenly rose. She clapped her hand over her mouth as  _ I remember doing the Time Warp  _ blared out through the Physics office and through the open door into Physics Lab 1 where twenty four students were engaged in Science Club. They all looked up and Rey’s two colleagues who were running the club turned around and stared at her through the glass window separating the office from the lab. JJ gave her a look that said  _ What the fuck  _ as loudly as any words, while Rian gave her a double thumbs up from the back of the room.

She quickly muted her laptop, her face flaming with embarrassment.

 

**From:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**To:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

THANKS FOR MAKING ME PLAY THAT IN PUBLIC. YOU ARE A HORRIBLE PERSON.

You actually did The Rocky Horror Picture Show as a school musical? I don’t know whether to be horrified or impressed.

I don’t mind musicals really. I’d just prefer not to hear them being rehearsed by teenagers every lunchtime. Anyway, [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ) ’s my favourite song from this year’s AGS musical. I think you will really like it.

Rey

 

Kylo should have known not to be so gullible when he clicked on the link, especially after sending her the Time Warp as a joke.

Still, he clicked the link and groaned as Rick Astley’s gurning face appeared in front of him and familiar music came out of his tinny speakers, just as Phasma opened the door. Her eyebrows rose.

“Aww, you’ve been rickrolled! Who’s never gonna give you up, Kylo, do tell!”

He closed the tab and glared at her. “A friend. What is it?”

“Just got that folder you were asking about earlier.” She handed it over and turned away again. Her hand on the door, she turned back and said mischievously, “I didn’t know you had a friend! Congratulations on that; you’re making real strides in normal human interaction.”

“Phasma!”

She ducked out before he could throw anything at her.

 

**From:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**To:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Very amusing, Rey. I think your musical will be a great success. 

Kylo

 

_ Friday _

**From:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**To:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Oh, it will be. The cast is very talented. All I wish is that I didn’t need to hear every track fifty times over.

I am so glad it is half term tomorrow. Yesterday was hell. Are you going away?

Rey

 

**From:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**To:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

What happened?

Kylo

 

**From:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**To:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

I had to see parents. One of my tutor group is causing trouble and we had to call in their parents and, well, I guess you can see why he is like the way he is when you meet his mother and father. Very difficult. And I had to miss hockey training with my team to make the meeting after school.

I guess I just need a holiday.

Rey

 

**From:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**To:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Parents are the worst part of the job. I’m sorry you had to deal with that. They think they know what’s best for their child but really they’re just projecting their own neuroses without thinking about what they really needs. Often they don’t know their own child at all.

I’m sure you did wonderfully. If you need any tips for dealing with them though, just ask. I’ve been doing this for longer than you.

Kylo

 

**From:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**To:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Bitter much, Mr. Ren?

Thank you for the vote of confidence and the offer of support, though I really have everything I need here. My Head of Year is very supportive. And in a few hours I won’t need to see any of them for a week!!!!

Rey

 

**From:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**To:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Congratulations on surviving your first half term at Alderaan Grammar School! Do you have any plans for half term? I was wondering, if you are around in Alderaan and not going away, would you like to get a drink sometime over the week? I have, unexpectedly, very much enjoyed our correspondence this week.

Kylo

 

Rey sat back at her laptop, trying to put as much distance between herself and it. School was over and the pub with Finn, Rose, Poe and others was beckoning but she had one last email to send before she could join them and celebrate the end of the first half term of teaching.

Was Kylo Ren, headmaster of Starkiller Academy, asking her out on a  _ date _ ?

She supposed she oughtn’t to be surprised. What did she think was going on, emailing a strange guy several times a day about things only tangentially related to the supposed subject of the email? Of course a man would take it to be flirting. Would assume she was interested in him. But she hadn’t been… had she? She didn’t even know what he looked like! He didn’t know what she looked like either, for that matter; he just assumed she was young and inexperienced. (She was, but it was annoying he assumed it. Did her emails somehow suggest naivety? She didn’t think so.) It was ludicrous the idea of him asking her out. If anything, he was adopting a mentor-like role towards her. He had to be quite a bit older than her to be a headmaster after all, though she recalled Finn having once said that he was young for a headteacher. Still, ‘young for a headteacher’ probably meant at least forty and that would make him fifteen to twenty years older than her. He didn’t come across as a forty year old in his emails though, not that she really knew what forty year old men sounded like. Poe was rising forty, she believed, and he was not old and stuffy at all.

More pertinently, of course, was the fact that Kylo Ren was the  _ headmaster  _ of  _ Starkiller Academy _ . Even if he turned out to be impossibly young and handsome, the idea of going out with him was ridiculous. If he’d just been a teacher then that might have been one thing, but the headmaster? He was responsible for too much.

Besides, Rey didn’t go on dates. She didn’t have relationships. It was not a thing she did and it was better this way, no matter how much she might be tempted. Not that she was tempted in this case. So he was amusing to email and an oddly comforting presence in her inbox? So she found the fact that he could match her idiosyncrasies on every level charming even when he was insulting her? It didn’t  _ mean  _ anything. And actually, this was a good wake-up call. It was typical that a man should take their casual banter as something more than it was. She needed to snap out of it and concentrate on her work and her real life friends. This was just a distraction which she definitely didn’t need when she was still in the early days of her new job. 

And she had never been so glad that she and Finn were going to Takodana for the week, meaning she did not even have to lie to him.

 

**From:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**To:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**Subject:** FW: Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Dear Kylo,

I’m afraid I am actually going away all week to see family so I won’t be able to meet you over half term. Perhaps another time.

I hope you have a good half term.

Rey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Double period** \- a lesson twice as long as single lessons. (Period = lesson.) For most schools, double periods are more normal than singles. Could be anything from an hour to two hours (though that would be rare). I think Starkiller's double periods are an hour and ten minutes.  
>  **Year 9** \- 13-14 year olds (8th grade). Generally every teacher's worst class. LOL @ Hux getting them last thing on a Friday, especially when he designs the timetables... SUCKER, he played himself!  
>  **Rey's title** \- a frustration I feel very much myself; I am constantly given the wrong title in professional emails because nobody knows and unlike Rey, I don't stick it officiously in my signature. I get the impression though I may be wrong that in the US female teachers are called "Ms" automatically, but that's very much not the case here.  
>  **Tutor group** \- class of students in one year grouped together for pastoral and administrative purposes including registration and PSHCE (personal, social, health and citizenship education). They may or may not have their lessons together. Each tutor group has a form tutor who is responsible for their pastoral well-being and behaviour.  
>  **Head of Year** \- teacher overall in charge of pastoral concerns and discipline of the students in a year group. The form tutor's direct line manager and there to support with difficult or more serious situations.  
>  **Half term** \- either refers to literally half a term of teaching (five to ten weeks depending on the time of year) or to the week long holiday in the middle of each term. Not as confusing as it sounds. The half term holiday Kylo is referring to is the last week of October splitting up the term that runs from the beginning of September to just before Christmas. The longest and most draining term of the year.
> 
> Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who has reviewed or given kudos or reblogged my post on tumblr. I hope you enjoy this chapter! <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Half term holidays. Rey gets curious about Kylo Ren's past while Maz worries about Rey's future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO SORRY. I ought to have written and posted this _months_ ago. It just turns out that when I'm on summer holidays I don't want to think about school... and that includes writing a fic set in a school! But I'm back now and will write and update as often as I can. Much love to anyone who picks this fic up again after a break!

Rey and Finn set off for Takodana after breakfast on Saturday in Finn’s bright red sports car. It was a little battered now and hopelessly impractical if you had suitcases, but it had been the first thing he had bought with his England rugby salary, when he had been filled with excitement at having money for the first time. Some of his purchases had been… questionable to say the least, but he loved that red sports car.

Both were somewhat hungover after the end of term pub visit, Finn more than Rey. Poe had got political again and had been joined by Snap, the Head of Technology and one of the school’s union reps, a potent combination. The more political they got, the more Finn drank. Now, he was groaning into the steering wheel as they drove out of Alderaan, heading for the motorway, and Rey passed him a flask containing strong coffee every time they stopped at traffic lights.

“Don’t let me drink again,” he complained to Rey, as they turned onto the motorway, speeding up the windscreen wipers as they pulled out behind a lorry spraying up grit and water in addition to the driving rain that had been going since the previous evening.

Rey shrugged and pulled her scarf more securely round her neck and jaw. “You never have been good at impulse control. You’ve nobody to blame but yourself.”

Finn groaned. “I have a lot of time for Poe - like, a  _ lot _ , but it’s just too much sometimes, you know? Him and Snap drinking together and going off on one with all that socialist stuff all the goddamn time when we’re just trying to have a nice evening!”

“Like you disagree with them!”

“I don’t… I just don’t want to hear it all the fucking time. Anyway.” He took a deep breath. “It’s in the past. Don’t get involved in staffroom politics and drama - that’s what Maz said, right?”

“Right! And maybe she should remind us again.”

Finn nodded his agreement and then said, “I’m glad she moved to Takodana. So much closer than if we had to trek up to Jakku.”

“Which would also involve actually going back to Jakku,” Rey pointed out.

“Never good.”

“Nope.”

When Rey had gone to university in Takodana, Maz, foster-mother first to Finn and then unofficially to Rey, had decided to sell her little house in Jakku and move to Takodana so that Rey could live with her and save money on accommodation. She had retired by that point and, as she pointed out herself, any excuse to leave that dump of a town was a good excuse. Takodana itself was an insignificant market town on the edge of a large forest near the south coast, about an hour and a half’s drive from Alderaan. It boasted a twelfth century abbey mostly destroyed during the Reformation, a soulless high street that had nevertheless won Britain in Bloom in 1996 and a modern, campus university that had expanded out of Takodana Polytechnic College in the 70s. In contrast to where Rey and Finn had grown up in Jakku, it was a green, forested paradise.

They arrived at Maz’s small, terraced house in pouring rain and made a run for it from the car, clutching their coats over their heads as makeshift protection. Maz, a tiny, black woman with a big heart, had the front door open as they stumbled in and Finn shook himself dry like a dog, spraying the others with water. Greetings waited until they had shed their outer garments and Maz had put them out to dry in the back pantry, made them both cups of tea, and brought out large slices of homemade fruit cake. Then she stopped to look them up and down.

“Finn, my boy, you’re not eating enough. Rey… your new school is good for you.”

Rey clutched her mug between cold fingers and gave Maz a lopsided smile. “Well, I think so. I mean, the kids are well-behaved-”

Finn snorted.

“They  _ are _ ! I mean, sure, they’re teenagers, but in comparison to my old school… Remember how someone chucked their GCSE textbook in the bin and literally set it on fire last year, Maz? That would never happen at AGS!”

“Sounds like your bar’s set pretty low, Rey honey.”

She rolled her eyes. “Trust me, after last year my bar is set so low I wouldn’t even need to lift my feet off the ground to clear it. But I do love AGS. I even have friends!”

“When she said the bar was low, she wasn’t exaggerating,” added Finn.

“Tell me about your friends.”

So Rey told her about Rose and Poe and her department until her face ached from smiling. The stresses that had crept in along with exhaustion in the last few weeks were washed away and all she felt was enthusiasm. She told Maz about the Junior Physics Challenge she was organising and her hockey team and the school musical Rose was going to play the trumpet in. She didn’t mention the bad tempered English teacher she had met in the cathedral cafe or her emails to Kylo Ren.

Later, when Finn was washing up after supper, Maz sat down opposite Rey, tilted her head to observe her, polished her glasses on her shirt and squinted at her more fully.

“Yes,” she said finally.

“Yes what?”

“I was right. This new school is good for you. I’m glad you’re making a real go of being a teacher.”

“Don’t really have much choice, right? That’s what I’m qualified for.”

“My dear child, you always have a choice. If you’d left teaching after the year you had last year, nobody would have blamed you.”

Rey shrugged. “That would have been giving up. I’m not surviving a PGCE and then quitting after a year.”

“I know you wouldn’t’ve,” Maz explained. “I’m just saying that nobody would have blamed you if you had. And you can still go back and get your masters and PhD in a few years once you’ve saved some money. I can help you if-”

“Maz, stop!” Rey laid her hand on her arm as if to physically restrain her from whatever generous offer she was about to make. “You’ve helped me so much but this is what I’m doing now. And I like it, I really do. I get to give something back and pass it on. Help other kids the way you helped me.”

“Pshaw! You would have got there without me.”

Rey shook her head and squeezed Maz’s arm but did not reply. Some things were too difficult to say and she had never been particularly good with words.

They all went to bed soon after, Maz not being someone who stayed up late on a regular basis (though when she did, she did it with style). Rey lay in the single bed that had been hers in Jakku - the first bed that had really felt like her own even if it had been Finn’s and numerous other foster kids’ before her - and had accompanied Maz to Takodana and been placed in the bedroom that had been christened “Rey’s room”. For four years through her degree and PGCE, it had indeed been Rey’s room and it still contained some of her textbooks which she had not needed after graduation and she knew if she looked, she would find her Takodana University Hockey Team hoodie neatly folded on the shelf at the top of the wardrobe. She lay in bed and heard the rain lash on the window with comforting familiarity, trying to sleep but unable to until she had become accustomed to the precious luxury of feeling at home once more. 

Above her on the side of the wardrobe, a glow-in-the-dark sticker galaxy left by a long grown foster child still prevented the room from being completely dark. Years ago, when Rey had first stayed over at Maz’s as a teenager, difficult and wounded, and the second bedroom had still been Finn’s and she had been in a sleeping bag on the floor, those ghostly, luminous stars and planets had been a great comfort in the night. 

“The ancients used the stars as a guide,” Maz had told her when she had said how much she liked them. “And they said that when a hero dies, they become a constellation and that’s how the stars get their names.”

All Rey had said to that had been a disinterested “Cool, whatever,” but she had gone to the library later and devoured all the books about the stars and space that she could find. When she had returned next to Maz’s, she found a gift - a child’s telescope.

“What’s this for?” she had asked suspiciously. There was no such thing as a free gift.

“It’s yours. So you can look at real stars out of the window, not just the ones on the wardrobe.”

Rey hadn’t quite believed her, but she took the telescope and used it whenever she stayed over with Finn. Weeks later, when Maz still hadn’t asked for anything in return, she had confessed in a mumble, without looking at her benefactor, “All this shit. It’s pretty cool to see it close up. They’re just these big lumps of rock and gas hurtling through space but they guide you, they show you the way. It’s just… it’s okay, I guess.”

Maz had shown interest, the only adult who ever had, and in the course of questioning the moody, lost girl peering through the telescope discovered that she had read about black holes and string theory and she knew all the myths about the major constellations.

“You could see them for yourself, you know,” she had said casually one day.

Rey had frowned. “How?”

“Go to university and study them and get a job working in astronomy. You could become an astronaut.”

Rey had barely heard anything beyond the first phrase. “Me? Go to university? Fuck off!”

“Why not? You’re interested, you’re clever, you already know a lot about it,” Maz had pointed out calmly. “You should think about your future.”

“My future?”

In Jakku nobody had a future. There was no industry left, no jobs - at least none that hadn’t been taken by Eastern European immigrants who were more desperate and had a better work ethic - and hardly anyone stayed in school after sixteen because there was no point. Your best option was to get pregnant and live off benefits. Yet somehow Maz had persuaded Rey to go to the library with her and look up degree courses in Astronomy and Astrophysics on the computer there and from that research, to see which A Levels would be needed to apply for such a course and what grades at GCSE were required in order to go to Sixth Form College and study those A Levels. And so it was, six months before she was due to sit her GCCEs, Rey began to study in earnest for the first time in her life. For the first time, she had something to work for.

It didn’t work out exactly as she had planned, of course. She applied for Physics in the end, she got rejected from her first choice university and it turned out if you really wanted to become an astronaut or work in advanced research facilities, you needed a PhD and she did not have the grades or the money to do a PhD. You could get so far with determination and hard work but it seemed some doors were simply closed to you if you didn’t start life with certain advantages. Nevertheless, as Maz said, just because you didn’t end up where you thought you would didn’t mean this wasn’t where you were meant to end up. Rey was not entirely sure she agreed with that or even fully understood it, but it helped.

Now, she stared at the sticker stars, their glow dimmer than it had been when she had been a teenager, and wondered what they thought of her life. She wondered what fifteen year old Rey would have made of it all. She probably wouldn’t have believed that she could ever have it so good. The thought made adult Rey feel a strange mix of sadness and pleasure.

* * *

 

It was a relaxing week. Being with Maz and in Takodana was holiday enough for Rey and Finn. They watched a lot of TV, helped Maz in the garden whenever it was dry enough to go outside and rake up leaves and deadhead the flowers, carved a pumpkin for Halloween into the shape of the masked villain from their favourite video game, and went on a day trip to the seaside one blustery autumn day and ate fish and chips on the pier, their fingers freezing in the wind. The rest of the time, Rey sat at the same desk at which she had completed her degree and tried to make a dent in the marking she had been forced to bring with her. It was tedious enough and every time she sat with her email open on her laptop, her mind drifted unwittingly to Kylo Ren, his last email still sitting near the top of her inbox.

She wondered what he was doing for half term. Despite her jibes that he never seemed to do any work, she assumed headteachers would have plenty to catch up on over half term. She wondered if he was very disappointed they were not going to meet up. She wondered if he had friends or family he would be spending time with. She wondered how he got on with the intimidatingly glamorous Ms Phasma. She wondered what he thought of the handsome but rude English teacher who had been at the hockey match. She wondered why he taught at Starkiller since so much of his sarcasm had seemed directed at his own institution; it was curious. Most of all though, she wondered about him, the man. How old he was, what he taught and perhaps most importantly considering he had sort of, kind of asked her out on a date, what he looked like. She found him disturbingly intriguing, a figure of mystery that she had denied herself an opportunity to get to know further but nevertheless could not stop thinking about.

One night towards the end of the holiday, lying awake with the light off long after she had technically gone to bed and still scrolling aimlessly through social media, she typed “Kylo Ren” into Google.

**Showing results for** **_kyle ren  
_ ** **Search instead for** **_kylo ren_ **

It turned out that Kyle Ren was a floppy-haired teenage singer from New Zealand in a boy band called Vanilla Trick. There were a lot of photos and articles about him. Mostly about who he was dating, whether he was or was not gay and what haircare products he was using.

There were not a lot of articles and no actual photos of Kylo Ren.

Rarely did anyone, let alone someone in the public eye like a headteacher, have such a small internet presence. Such a thing was not natural and had to be curated very carefully. It only made Rey more curious.

The most information she could find came from an article in the Alderaan Gazette recording his appointment as Headmaster of Starkiller Academy two years ago.

_ The new headmaster, Kylo Ren, is a thirty-one year old protégé of Lord Snoke’s, who radiates a forceful efficiency despite his youth. “He is just the man for the job,” said Lord Snoke in an earlier interview. “Education in Alderaan is smothered by tradition. A new school calls for new blood and Ren is exactly what we need. I have complete confidence that he will be able to make Starkiller Academy stand apart from all other schools in the area.” _

Only thirty-one! So thirty-three now. He really wasn’t old at all. Years younger than Poe, for instance. Chewing on her lip, she flicked over to images again and scrolled down. The one photo in which he apparently appeared was a large group photo at a First Order fundraiser. Ms Phasma was there in another perfect trouser suit, the English teacher was there, his features wiped of any expression, there was a smarmy looking ginger she assumed was Hux, a bald, old man with some skin disorder, a tall and unsmiling black man, a small, wizened old man and seven others, at least four of whom could be roughly the right age. There was no indication which was him. Regrettably, the English teacher was the best looking of the bunch. She had probably dodged a bullet. Honestly, dating the headmaster of Starkiller Academy? Getting involved with this bunch of crooks?  _ Ew.  _ Why was she still fixating on him?

She put her phone on her bedside table, rolled over into a ball and determined to go to sleep. Ten minutes of tossing and turning later, she grabbed her phone again.

Who  _ was  _ he? Where had he come from? Why couldn’t she find anything out? If you Googled her (and she did Google herself regularly - it was important when you were a teacher to check your students couldn’t find anything incriminating), you’d see a random selection of photos, mainly of her playing hockey and several mentions of her A Levels, remarkably good for her college in Jakku, along with several mentions in sports team reports and articles about wins or in school newsletters from her previous school and AGS. She was careful with privacy settings but she had left footprints online throughout her life. It was hard not to.

Kylo Ren had no facebook page, no twitter, definitely no instagram, and apparently no public existence before he came into being out of nowhere as the Headmaster of Starkiller Academy. If she hadn’t thought the First Order was shady before, she definitely did now. She went back on the Starkiller Academy website to the staff list. At the very least, she could find out where he had gone to university.

_ Headmaster - Kylo Ren - Mustafar College, BA _

Mustafar College? What the actual fuck was Mustafar College? She had never heard of it.

She Googled it. Apparently it was a liberal arts college in Arizona. Rey laid her phone down on her duvet screen down and took a moment to digest this. Kylo Ren had gone to university in America but not to one of the Ivy League universities that would justify the expense and distance or to somewhere in a famous city but to some small college in the middle of the desert that nobody had ever heard of. She wasn’t entirely sure what a liberal arts college even was. This made absolutely no sense. It was so absurdly stupid that she felt an odd desire to giggle. She clicked on the link to the Mustafar College website and was greeted by a reddish-orange background and an announcement in a thick, black font.

**_Mustafar College website is undergoing maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please email_ ** [ **_info@mustafar.org_ ** ](mailto:info@mustafar.org) **_for further information. Current students may access the VLE and webmail as usual._ **

Rey stared. And blinked. Hell, she needed to sleep! It was almost 2am and her eyes were glazing over. Instead, she found herself opening up her school email account on her phone and typing out a hasty email.

**From:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**To:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**Subject:** Mustafar

You went to uni in ARIZONA????? Why tho???????

Also I think your uni is fake. Where did you actually go? What is your DEAL?

 

She pressed send and flung her phone onto the bedside table before she could consider the wisdom in sending such a message.

But she really wanted to know.

* * *

 

Rey swam into consciousness late the following day to the smell of bacon from downstairs. For several minutes she remained in blissful ignorance of what she had been doing in the night but when she remembered, she groaned deep into her pillow. She grabbed her phone and, feeling sick at the thought of what she might find, opened her school emails. Her outbox showed that she hadn’t imagined emailing Kylo Ren a deeply inappropriate message on the school system, but her inbox contained no reply. With luck, he would just delete her email and consider that he had had a good escape.

She hadn’t even been drunk.

Though perhaps she could message him again apologising and claiming she had been drunk… but that might just make it worse. Because what did it say about her if what she did when drunk was Google Kylo Ren and then email him about it? What did it say that she did that  _ sober _ ?

Maz’s voice wafted up. “Breakfast! Rey, you awake? I’ve done a fry-up!”

“Coming!” Rey yelled back and forced herself out of bed.

She stumbled into the kitchen where Finn thrust a mug of coffee into her hands and Maz placed a plate of bacon, fried egg, mushrooms, beans and toast before her.

“God, this looks amazing,” she said sitting down and wondering where to start. “Just what I need. Couldn’t sleep for ages last night.”

“You’re on washing up!” said Finn as he speared a bit of bacon.

“Yes, sir!”

Maz was looking at her. “Are you alright, Rey? If you can’t sleep-”

Rey shook her head around a mouthful of beans. “Nope,” she said after swallowing. “Nothing like that. I’m fine, never better. Honestly. Just couldn’t sleep.”

Because she had been creepily internet stalking a professional rival who had asked her out. So healthy.

“So long as you’re sure. Because I know how you get when you’re low. You need to watch for the warning signs and you know the autumn term is a stressful one especially with a new job… You’re not seeing anyone at the moment, are you?”

“Two years therapy free!” Rey sighed. “Maz, honestly, I’m fine. I take all my anger out playing video games and life is actually pretty good. Sure, the job’s overwhelming sometimes but, like, that’s life, right? Even normal people are down sometimes. You can’t expect it to always be sunshine and kittens.”

“I dunno about you but my life is literally always sunshine and kittens,” put in Finn, deflecting the conversation and getting the laughs he wanted.

“Honey, you are the strongest person I know,” said Maz covering her hand with her own. “But everyone needs someone to talk to, even if it’s not a therapist. Don’t bottle things up until it’s too late. I worry about you, you know.”

“I know, Maz, and I love you for it. But I have Finn and I’m not bottling anything up. I promise.”

“Okay.”

Maz let it go and they returned their focus to the cooked breakfast, Rey feeling oddly guilty instead of comforted. She meant everything she said but she nevertheless felt that Maz was unsatisfied as if she knew something Rey didn’t. This wasn’t unexpected and Rey still trusted her with the faith of a teenager who had latched onto her as a saviour, the way she sometimes did to parental figures. And yes, that had been one of the first conversations she had had with her first therapist who had discovered a minefield of issues to work through when it came to her early abandonment. But she had sorted all that out, hadn’t she?

Later, Finn went out for a run while Rey did the washing up, humming tunelessly along to the radio until Maz came back into the kitchen and sat down, turning the radio off. This was a familiar signal that Rey was about to be subjected to a maternal talking to. She didn’t even mind too much.

“I know I put you a bit on the spot at breakfast,” Maz began. “But in truth I’m just so pleased to see you doing so well, especially that you are making more friends. It’s good to have a wide support network.”

“I’m not sure I’d call them a support network, they’re my friends.”

“Of course they are. But you do need more people in your life than Finn so I’m glad to hear about Rose and the others.”

“Yeah…” She could tell this was going somewhere and she suddenly wondered for the first time if Maz had these deep conversations with Finn as well as her and if so, what they said to each other.

“And I was wondering if perhaps you’re now ready to seek out some different relationships.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think you know what I mean. Alderaan is a nice place and you have a steady job you’re happy in. It’s time to consider your personal life, Rey.”

Rey sighed and stared down into the soapy water a moment before replying. “You know I don’t do that sort thing and you know why.”

“I know why you  _ haven’t  _ done it but every time you remind yourself of it you’re reliving the past. You can’t let it define you. Honey, it’s time to move on. Think of your future.”

Rey took a deep breath and turned around, leaning against the sink and folding her arms over her chest. “You want some grandchildren, is that it? Well, I’m sorry but-”

“That’s got  _ nothing  _ to do with it, though now you mention it... “ She chuckled. “I just don’t think you’re cut out for the single life forever. You’ve got a lot of love to give - I can tell every time you talk about your pupils - and I think with the right person you could be happy, happier than you’ve ever imagined.”

“Very motivational. You can give a toast at my wedding.”

“I’ll hold you to that. But there’s no need to get snarky because I’m prodding you where it hurts. You know I’m right. Finn won’t be your housemate forever and you can’t let your past define you. You say you’re doing fine but you won’t be until you deal with this.”

“You want me to go out and fuck someone? Is that what you’re saying? Because I reckon I could do that easily enough but we both know it’s a terrible idea.”

“No! That is, if you want to and you feel you can deal with it, sure, go for it! You’re an adult and sex can be great. I just think you should be open to…” She shrugged and her eyes crinkled up in mischief. “New experiences!”

“New experiences!” Rey nodded. “Right. Whatever that means.”

“It means whatever you want it to mean.”

“And that’s not cryptic at all.”

Maz stood up and patted her arm. “You’re a good girl, Rey. You’ll figure it out.” She peered into the sink. “And that pan’s still greasy.”

Rey rolled her eyes and plunged her arms back into the cooling water once more. Maz meant well and Rey was self-aware enough to know she wasn’t wrong. Love and sex was one aspect of herself she had shoved into a box which she wasn’t at all keen on opening. There had always been something more pressing to work through and she had always known she’d have to deal with it at some point. But, she reflected with an inner shrug, ‘some point’ did not have to be any time soon and she was perfectly happy with her single state.

* * *

Kylo Ren had not replied to her email by supper time and Rey was feeling increasingly nervy. Finn gave her odd looks as she continuously refreshed Outlook on her phone while they were supposedly watching  _ Strictly Come Dancing _ . 

“C’mon, Rey,” he muttered eventually, “it’s still the holiday. You can save checking work emails until tomorrow evening at least, surely? What are you expecting?”

Rey shoved her phone back into her pocket. “Nothing.”

He gave her a disbelieving look but turned his attention back to the TV. They watched a samba and a rhumba in silence until Rey suddenly said, “Hey, Finn, what do you know about Kylo Ren?”

“Kylo Ren? He’s a douchebag and I never want to have anything to do with him again - why?”

“I just…” On the screen in front of them Anton was enthusing about how wonderful the aging and overweight news reporter he’d been paired up with was. “I had to email him a few times about the Physics Challenge and I guess… I was wondering what kind of headteacher he was.”

“Eh.” Finn made a face. “He kept himself to himself really, left most interaction with the staff to Phasma and Hux. My impression was he was always in a bad mood. Lots of door slamming. The office staff were terrified of him. I just tried to keep out of his way.”

“He’s very young, isn’t he?” Rey prodded.

“I guess,” said Finn without much interest. “The whole management at that place stinks so it figures they’d have a head who’s too young to do a good job.”

“This is the headteacher at your old school?” said Maz suddenly, who was curled up in an armchair and had been observing the dialogue instead of following the show.

Finn nodded and Rey suddenly felt as if she had been caught out. She had been going to ask Finn what Kylo Ren looked like but now she wondered if showing so much curiosity would look odd. She didn’t like Maz’s attention, especially after their conversation that morning. Not that she thought that going on a sort of blind date with Finn’s ex-headteacher was what Maz had meant when she had advised her to be open to new experiences.

Instead she just said, “Did he do any teaching or did he just do admin?”

She knew the answer to this but it made it easier for her to look as if she didn’t care about what he said.

“He did teach a bit,” Finn replied. “Some humanities subject, I think. History or English or RS maybe, I don’t know.”

“I see.”

He glanced down at her. “Got what you needed to know? Was he rude in his emails?”

A smile tugged at Rey’s lips before she could help it. “Not really. A bit sarcastic.”

“Sounds about right. Thank god for Leia. Now she’s a head you can get behind!” He raised his glass of squash in a mock toast.

“Cheers!” agreed Rey. She glanced at Maz and quickly looked away. The older woman’s expression was far too thoughtful.

The following day was Sunday so Rey and Finn packed up the car, including a loaf of homemade bread, a crate of local cider and a package Maz thrust at Rey to give to Finn on his birthday in a few weeks time. They drove back to Alderaan in weather only marginally better than the downpour they had arrived in. Rey still had no reply to her email to Kylo Ren and she was starting to think he really was going to ignore it and wasn’t sure whether she was as relieved as she ought to be about that

* * *

Kylo Ren had had an excellent half term. Friday evening, after being turned down by Rey for a drink, he had arrived home, closed the curtains on the grey, wet October dreariness and disconnected his phone, unsynched his work emails and disabled all his apps apart from the takeaway ones. Then he had got into his pyjamas and prepared for a week of curry and alternating watching serial killer documentaries on Netflix with re-reading  _ Paradise Lost _ . Real life along with anything Snoke or Hux wanted from him could get fucked for a week.

Perfect. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **PGCE** \- Post-graduate Certificate of Education. The year long course that qualifies you to be a teacher. Often a tough year.  
>  **Sixth Form College** \- some schools finish at 16 so students have to go to a Sixth Form college for the final two years of schooling. Often (but not always) a sign the school isn't very academic if they don't have a Sixth Form. Sixth Form colleges are notoriously underfunded.  
>  **RS** \- Religious Studies.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone for reading and reviewing! It means a lot to know that people are still following this.
> 
>  **Trigger warning** : This chapter contains brief, oblique and non-graphic mentions of and implications of child abuse. If this is a trigger for you, proceed with caution.
> 
> Have a Leia-centric chapter! :)

By lunchtime on Monday, it was as if they had never been away. New seating plans were already causing problems, someone making toast in the Sixth Form common room set off the fire alarm during morning break, and emails about schedules for the first parents evening of the year were flying through the aether.

The only thing that suggested that everyone had just had a week’s holiday were the conversations in the canteen over lunch about what they had done. Rose had gone to Center Parcs with her mother - “So relaxing and I got to try archery and horse riding!” whereas Poe had stayed in Alderaan and joined the Labour Party and wouldn’t stop talking about how Jeremy Corbyn was going to save the country.

“Frankly,” he was saying to everyone around him on the staff table whether they wanted to listen or not, “the whole anti-semitism thing has been blown completely out of proportion. It’s all a ruse by the Right to discredit Labour and Corbyn’s leadership. It really has nothing to do with anti-semitism.”

“Careful taking that view around Leia,” said Amilyn mildly across the table. “She might not be able to take such a detached view as you can.”

“Oh good, let’s start talking about religion now,” muttered George around a mouthful of quiche. “That’s not going to be controversial at all.”

“Can we _please_ stop talking about politics for five minutes?” pleaded Finn. “Come on, guys, did anyone else watch the West Ham match?”

At the same time, Leia herself brought her tray over and sat down next to Amilyn and opposite Rey. “Taking what view around me?” she queried with a grin. “I don’t bite!”

“Nor do you stifle free speech among your staff even when they may disagree with you?” said Poe.

“Certainly not!”

The conversation seemed likely to turn back to politics and Rey wanted to support Finn and JJ so she smiled and asked Leia if she had had a good half term.

“Lovely, thank you, Rey, though too short as usual. Did you?”

“Great, thanks. Did you go away?”

“I went to see my brother in Oxford for a few days. Otherwise I was just here catching up on emails. Never stops!”

“Your brother’s in Oxford?” asked Rey with interest. Despite having heard something of the famous Skywalker dynasty from Poe earlier in the term, she had not realised there was yet another one of them out there. “Is he an academic?”

“What else!” replied Leia with a chuckle. “Well, he is in theory. He’s semi-retired now, a bit of a hermit really. He’s not published anything in years.” Briefly a shadow crossed her face as she looked down and started on her shepherd’s pie.

Rey screwed up her mouth in silent sympathy. There was a story there but it was not her place to pry. “What’s his subject?” she asked, trying for something more neutral.

“Ancient religions,” said Leia. “Never understood it myself but each to their own.”

“It sounds interesting.” She said it to be polite but she meant it too. She knew very little about any religions, ancient or modern, though she had always found the Greek gods fascinating, what little she knew about them. But very likely Leia’s brother’s research was about other things.

“People have certainly found it so,” replied Leia, rather obscurely. She stared hard at a piece of limp broccoli and then seemed to give herself a mental shake. “That reminds me, Rey, I wanted to ask you something.”

Rey blinked. “Oh?” Her heart thumped as she suddenly and ridiculously wondered if Leia wanted to go over the fair use of IT policy and remind her that her emails were being monitored.

“I would like to invite you to dinner sometime over the next week or so if we can find a day we can both manage.”

 _Oh_.

“Wow! That’s - that’s - really nice of you! I was not expecting that!”

Leia smiled with some amusement. “I invite all new members of staff round for dinner once they’ve found their feet in the first term. It’s a great way to get to know my team and for you to get to know me.” She leaned in closer and said confidentially to Rey, seeing her still look surprised, “The truth is, Rey, I live alone and I get lonely sometimes. It’s nice to have company in the evening. So if you can bear to give up an evening to spend with your middle-aged boss, I’d love to make you dinner.”

How could Rey resist such an invitation? She smiled and shrugged. “There’s no sacrifice involved! I’d love to come. It’s very kind of you.”

“Now, I know you’re doing lots of hockey so this might be tricky, but are you free a week on Friday?”

There were no practises on Fridays and Rey didn’t mind giving up spending the evening in the pub one week. “I am!”

“Excellent. I’ll email you my address.”

After establishing Rey had no dietary requirements and wasn’t allergic to dogs or cats, the plan was sorted and Leia turned away to talk to Amilyn and Poe. Rey caught Rose’s eye and told her what had just happened in a whisper.

“Oh yeah,” Rose whispered back, “she invited me too when I first joined. You’re going to have an amazing evening. Her house is massive and she’s got this crazy robot butler thing her father made, like, fifty years ago and it still works. It’s really steampunk.”

“Leia? This is Leia, our headmistress, you’re talking about?”

“I know! You’d never think it.” Rose lowered her voice still further. “Under all the tailored suits I reckon she’s a bit of a rebel, or she was once. You never can tell with people.”

“No,” Rey agreed, wondering. Her physicist’s mind was particularly looking forward to getting a look at that steampunk robot butler, or whatever the hell Rose meant. In the meantime, however, she had to teach circuits to Year 8 and go over mechanics problems with Year 13 before the end of the day and both lessons required concentration.

* * *

The first day back after any holiday, even just a half term, was always exhausting and Rey sank onto her chair in the Physics office at the end of the day with relief and aching feet, took a large swig of water from her bottle, and unlocked her computer.

Finally, _finally_ , she had a reply from Kylo Ren and her heart skipped a beat from surprise. After fixating on it for several days, she had now almost managed to convince herself that she had never emailed him in the first place and had dreamed the entire embarrassing thing.

Unfortunately not.

Her finger hovered over the keypad. She really didn’t want to know what he was going to say. She had been completely out of line. But equally he hadn’t seemed the sort of person to give her a stern telling off. He had sent her a link to the Time Warp, for goodness sake! And if he really had been offended, surely he would just have ignored the message and not replied at all? Taking a deep breath, she opened the email.

 **From:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**To:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**Subject:** Re: Mustafar

You’ve got me, Rey. Mustafar is indeed a fake university, I don’t have a legitimate degree, my teaching career is a lie - oh, and Kylo Ren isn’t my real name.

Excellent deduction. I can see now why the prestigious Alderaan Grammar School hired you.

Kylo (OR IS IT?)

  
“Oh screw you, Kylo Ren!” said Rey under her breath and buried her relieved laughter in her hands.

He was trolling her but she deserved it and she could take it. And that was far better than him actually being angry or getting her in trouble. And she had - she had _missed_ their emails.

Which was bad. Which was very bad. The laughter faded and her face fell. She couldn’t reply, she couldn’t continue this correspondence as if it didn’t mean something.

Then, just as she had determined to close the door on this weird, virtual whatever-it-was, another email pinged into her inbox.

   
**From:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**To:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**Subject:** Re: Mustafar

By the way, how many Oxbridge applicants have you got this year?

  
Before she could even reflect on the wisdom of doing so, she fired off a reply.

 **  
** From: rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**To:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**Subject:** Re: Mustafar

What???

 **From:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**To:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**Subject:** Re: Mustafar

I really don’t know how to rephrase the question so you can understand… And so soon after I just praised your intelligence!

 **From:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**To:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**Subject:** Re: Mustafar

Teaching fail. You should always know how to rephrase a question.

I’ve no idea how many Oxbridge applicants we have.

Kylo, I don’t want to keep emailing you like this. It’s strange. We don’t know each other. Our schools are rivals. And I don’t know why you are asking me these questions.

  
She had hesitated several long minutes over sending this message but in the end she felt she had to. It _was_ strange. They _didn’t_ know each other and their schools _were_ rivals. She also had the increasingly strong feeling that something here really didn’t add up. The way Kylo Ren talked to her in his emails and the way Finn and others described him were so completely different that it was almost as if there were two different men involved.

The Kylo Ren she had heard about she pictured as something like a cross between Professor Snape, complete with wizarding robes, and an alt-right men’s rights activist (whatever one of them looked like). The Kylo Ren of her emails… well, he was very hard to visualise, but in her imagination despite knowing he had to be one of the men in the photo she had found, he was youthful, had floppy hair and dressed like an old-fashioned professor in tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbows, Clark Kent glasses and looked something like Matthew Goode crossed with Bruce Banner. It was some sort of twisted version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the digital age. Demon headmaster by day, snarky Oscar Wilde quoting nerd by night.

Which was all ridiculous. But she nevertheless felt that she was right to be wary. When his reply popped into her inbox and contained nothing but a phone number, she frowned at it for several minutes and sighed.

Another message came through quickly afterwards.

 **  
** From: headmaster@starkiller.org  
**To:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**Subject:** Re: Mustafar

I asked because you’re the only person I know who might be able to and inclined to answer. That’s all. You don’t have to reply. But I hope you will.

Kylo

  
Rey physically closed her laptop, sat staring at it, then opened it up again. She tapped his number into her phone, closed the laptop again, put her phone away, took her phone out again, put it on the table in front of her, planned two lessons for the next day and eventually picked up her phone again.

Kylo Ren might not have had facebook, twitter or instagram but he did at least use WhatsApp. She enlarged his profile picture with curiosity only to discover it was an old looking black and white drawing of some kind of angel or winged demon creature; it was hard to tell.

 **  
** **Rey**  
we have 11 applications for physics related subjects and I’ve read several personal statements for maths but beyond that I really dont know. I can try to find out

 **Kylo  
** Thank you.

 **Rey  
** wtf is ur profile pic?

 **Kylo  
** It’s the fall of Lucifer from Paradise Lost.  
I was reading it over half term.

 **Rey  
** huh

 **Kylo  
** What’s yours? Looks weird.

 **Rey  
** MY FACE!!! :<

 **Kylo  
** ;-)

  
She really needed to stop messaging him.

* * *

Despite deciding that she absolutely needed to stop communicating with Kylo Ren, she did not delete his number off her phone and over the next couple of weeks they exchanged the odd, random flurry of messages just as if they were the kind of best friends who didn’t need any context for messaging. WhatsApp was dangerous, for it encouraged that kind of casual communication and even sending photos. Thursday evening after hockey practice, Rey sent a picture of the playing fields covered in the first frost of the season, glittering under the floodlights. Kylo returned with a picture of a curry and beer in front of a large TV. “Ugh jealous” replied Rey, but she smiled about it all the way home on her bike. She wondered where he lived.

The following Friday was the promised dinner with Leia. It was the first time Rey had gone out to dinner with anyone important and she didn’t want to mess up the etiquette. On Maz’s advice, she had bought a bottle of wine to take with her and she spent a long time standing in front of her mirror wondering what to wear. She did not really own nice clothes. Either she was in one of her plain trouser suits for work or she was in jeans and t-shirts and her favourite leather jacket. As for make-up, she barely owned any and the only type of look she knew how to do was the over-the-top sort of thing she had thought was cool when she had been sixteen but made her cringe now.

“Wear jeans and one of your work blouses,” Finn advised when Rey slouched into the sitting room and begged for help. “You’ll look nice but not formal. And fuck make-up. It’s not like you wear any to school. No-one cares and you don’t need it.”

This was not entirely reassuring but Rey did not have any better ideas so she followed his suggestions, twisted her hair up into its three buns, pulled on her jacket, twisted her scarf round her neck, grabbed her helmet and the bottle of wine and went out before she could change her mind.

Leia lived in a village ten minutes out of Alderaan. It was mid-November so completely dark when Rey was speeding down the high street past quaint thatched cottages, an old church and several traditional pubs. She lived down a side-street behind the church in a house set back from the road that was so massive that Rey, coming to a stop outside the gate, murmured, “Holy shit,” in awe when she saw it.

She pushed open the gate and wheeled her bike in, parking it discreetly round the side of the house to avoid ruining the symmetry of the initial approach. She left the helmet hung on a handlebar, reckoning that the likelihood of opportunistic thieves was slim here and rang the bell.

The jangle echoed and Rey waited a minute, fidgeting and wishing she had invited Rose round to do her make-up and that she’d bought a dress for the occasion. Compared to what she was used to, this was some _Pride and Prejudice_ level shit.

Then there was a series of deep barks and Rey heard Leia say something from inside and the door opened. Leia’s face broke into a smile.

“Come in, Rey! I hope you’ve not been out in the cold long; I had to strain the beans. Down, Chewie, down, boy!”

Rey was ushered into a warm and beautifully decorated hallway and found her attention immediately taken by a large, shaggy dog who was nosing at her hand, his fluffy tail wagging vigorously.

“This is Chewie the Third,” said Leia proudly. “He’s a very good boy.” Chewie barked. “Most of the time.”

Rey looked up from patting the dog and grinned. “I’m sure he is. Hello, Chewie! This - this is for you,” she added, holding the wine out a little awkwardly. “Thank you so much for inviting me.”

“You are so welcome, Rey. I’ve been looking forward to this. Come on through and let me get you a drink. C’mon, Chewie!”

“May I take your coat?” inquired a tinny voice suddenly at Rey’s side as she straightened up and she jumped back with a strangled exclamation at finding herself face to face with a shiny, golden, humanoid robot.

She could only stare.

“Good evening,” said the robot in the most perfect RP accent Rey had heard outside of an old-fashioned period drama. “My name is C. Threepio, human cyborg relations. You are a guest of Mistress Leia. May I take your coat?”

“Uh, Leia…”

The headmistress was standing in a doorway, her hands on her hips and chuckling. “People’s reactions never get old! Sorry, Rey. Meet Threepio, my father’s most enduring creation. Marvellous, isn’t he?”

“Marvellous,” echoed Rey. She tilted her head and studied the humanoid robot. How had such a thing been achieved back in Lord Vader’s day? It was incredible! “How does it work?”

“Excuse me,” said Threepio, who had mirrored Rey and tilted its (his?) head. “I do have feelings, you know. Not that anyone cares. May I take your coat?”

Rey still felt stunned so just did what the robot asked and quickly took off her jacket and handed it over. The robot thanked her and stiffly walked over a closet and hung it up inside.

“He’s incredible!” she exclaimed in a low tone as if Threepio really did have feelings and could hear her, when Leia had ushered her into a reception room and was pouring her a glass of wine. “I can’t believe your dad actually made him! How did he set up the circuits? It’s so far ahead of its time!”

“My father was a genius,” said Leia casually and sat down next to her on the sofa, “and not just in educational reform. I don’t agree with everything he stood for or did, most of it actually, but his genius can’t be disputed. He read Physics, you know, just like you.”

Rey shook her head. “Not just like me. I could never create something like Threepio.”

“Give yourself time. Rome wasn’t built in a day!”

Rey sipped her wine and looked around her. She had never been in such a luxurious house - it was clearly wealthy but was tasteful in every respect, just rich enough to be comfortable but not ostentatious. It was also scrupulously neat and tidy and she was almost sure that all the artwork on the walls was original.

“You have a beautiful house, Leia.”

“It’s nice, isn’t it? Too big for one, of course, but the animals and Threepio keep me company. The cat will be somewhere around,” she explained at Rey’s questioning look. “He doesn’t like people. Come through to the dining room - bring your drink. It’s a beef stew, I hope that’s okay.”

“Brilliant!”

Rey followed her into another beautiful and perfectly arranged room, with Chewie following them wherever they went. The whole place was so polished that it felt almost like the sort of house you read articles about in magazines, not a real place someone actually lived. She had not seen a single photo or personal effect, though she supposed the house was big enough for Leia to distinguish between the parts guests came into and the rooms in which she actually lived.

“Honestly,” she said a little later as Leia was ladling out stew, “this smells so amazing. I’m not much of a cook - I mainly live off pasta and ready meals - so something like this is just so good.”

Leia laughed. “I hope you still think that once you’ve tried it. I never used to be interested in cooking - for a while I even employed a cook because there’s no way Han was going to cook anything edible - but these last few years I’ve tried to get into it more, make up for lost time.”

“Well, it’s a triumph,” said Rey after several bites and then added diffidently, “Sorry, Han is…? You probably said but…”

Leia blinked. “Oh! Han is - was my husband.”

Rey stared. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realise there was a Mr. Organa.”

Leia laughed suddenly and ruefully. “Oh, my dear, I was just imagining his reaction at being called Mr. Organa. But I’m afraid you’ll have to change your tenses. Han died over ten years ago.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

Leia nodded. “It’s okay. We had a good run of it. Twenty five years isn’t too bad.”

“Not bad at all!” Rey was beginning to understand Leia’s solitude and both pitied her situation and admired her strength. “Do you have any children?” At least a child could help with the loss.

“We had a son, Ben,” said Leia, taking a sip of wine. She contemplated her dinner for a moment. “Unfortunately we have not been on good terms for a while now.”

Rey frowned. “I’m sorry.” Then she kicked herself. She sounded like a broken record.

Leia’s lips quirked up in a sardonic smile. “You can stop with the sympathy, Rey. He was a difficult child and has grown into a difficult man. But Han and I made our mistakes too; he didn’t have an easy time of things. Still, I’d give anything to get him back.”

Rey was about to say that she was sorry again and checked herself in time. She chewed her lip, thinking, and then confessed, “I never had parents. It’s hard to hear about families that are estranged. I wish you could reconcile with your son so much.”

Leia looked at her, really looked at her with a piercing thoroughness that made her feel a bit uncomfortable. She looked as if she was going to say something before changing her mind and saying instead, “Remind me where you’re from. It’s not around here, is it?”

So that was the end of that conversation. Rey supposed she wasn’t surprised. Leia’s relationship with her son was none of her business. It just killed her a bit that they hadn’t been able to work things out. What child was so ungrateful not to appreciate having Leia Organa as their mother? She was sure that Leia was just being modest in talking of her and Han’s mistakes - in Rey’s eyes, Leia could do no wrong. It did not leave her with a favourable impression of Ben whatever-his-surname-was.

And now they were talking about her. Fantastic. She drank more wine.

“Jakku,” she replied. “And no, it’s nowhere near - Yorkshire coast.”

“Ah yes. The accent suggested something like that. Near Scarborough, isn’t it?”

“Not too far but Scarborough’s much nicer.”

“I’m just trying to think how I’ve heard of it.”

“Buzzfeed worst places to live in Britain?” Rey suggested. “Came first.”

Leia laughed. “That bad, huh? No, it wasn’t that. Wasn’t there some scandal there a while back?”

Rey’s knife and fork stilled a moment. “Oh, yes, that. The child abuse scandal. Always a great way to put a place on the map.”

“They arrested the head of social services only a few years ago, didn’t they? He had a funny name, I remember. So shocking, especially coming so soon after the similar scandal in Rotherham.”

“Unkar Plutt,” said Rey flatly. “Yes. Looks like Yorkshire’s the place to be if you want to get paid for exploiting children for years.”

“Though these things can happen anywhere. At least he was arrested.”

“He liked to be called Uncle Plutt.”

There was an awful silence.

“Rey, I - I should have realised after what you said. You knew him.” Leia looked aghast. “It’s my turn to say ‘I’m sorry’ and I really am.”

“It’s okay,” said Rey, looking at her plate. “Really.”

“No, it’s not. I was thoughtless and this whole evening is meant to help you feel more comfortable around me! Let’s change the subject. Ask me anything. Anything at all, no matter how embarrassing. It’s only fair!”

There was something so honest and self-deprecating in this that Rey could not but be charmed. Headteachers were not expected to apologise and Rey liked her more for doing so. It was not Leia’s fault Jakku was a shithole, Unkar Plutt was a beast and Rey’s childhood had been awful.

“Okay. Um, tell me about Han. How did you meet?”

She was genuinely curious but there was a mean, little part of her, the part that had given her a sick feeling in her stomach and turned her off eating second helpings of the delicious beef stew, that hoped bringing up Leia’s dead husband again would give her even the smallest amount of reciprocal pain.

But Leia just smiled, looking relieved, and shook her head. “It’s pretty unbelievable; you sure you want to know?”

“Well, _now_ I do!”

Leia smiled more. “We met in prison.”

Rey stared. “You were in-”

“Oh no, not me. Han was in prison. I was doing a project on prisoner education for my masters degree. He was one of my… my subjects, I guess you could say.”

“Wow. And you just _got together_?”

“God, no.” Leia laughed ruefully. “Can you imagine? I’d have been horrified. He was everything I wasn’t, I despised him, I looked down on him, he pushed all my buttons and yet I kept coming back. For interview after interview.” The smile turned wistful. “He called me Princess, you know. And then one day, I guess I found I didn’t despise him so much. Funny how these things happen just at the moment and with the person you’d least expect.”

“A real case of opposites attract?” suggested Rey, leaning her chin on her hand. There was a strange tightness in her breast. Not in all her life had she ever seen an example of a positive, healthy romantic relationship. Not in any of her foster families, not with Maz who despite having the occasional “boyfriend” seemed uninterested in making any deeper or more long-term ties, not with Finn who had always found navigating dating as a bisexual rugby player challenging. But she had read enough novels and seen enough romantic comedies to know how this story played out, of the princess and the scoundrel. Though generally they didn’t end with the death of one party.

“You’d think,” Leia was replying pensively. “But I’m not sure that opposites are ever really opposites in these situations. Han and I had a lot in common under all the superficial differences. Both stubborn as hell, for example.”

Rey moistened her lips. “Han… what did he do? I mean, I guess you got him out?”

“Oh yes. It’s amazing what a really good and expensive lawyer can accomplish! He was in for smuggling.”

“ _Smuggling_?” Was that even a thing in the twentieth century? It called to mind romantic stories of Cornish pirates and counterfeit rum from the continent.

Leia paused the story to make coffee. Once they were back in the living room and sitting next to each other on a sofa, Chewie lying sleepily at Leia’s feet, she resumed.

“Han was a lorry driver. He did long distance deliveries between France and England, working freelance. And let’s just say… some of what he brought across never got listed in the books.”

“Wow,” said Rey again. She almost added “ _cool_ ” but stopped herself in time.

Leia studied her a moment. Then she said calmly, “I’m not talking about cigarettes and brandy, though he did do a bit of that. He smuggled people, Rey. Illegal immigrants. He loaded them in secret compartments in his lorry, got them over the channel and let them out in safety once in England. That’s how I knew he was okay, you see. He helped people - not legally of course, but he helped them. Refugees from beyond the iron curtain or escaping war in the Balkans or the Middle East, and he had contacts in England too - he didn’t just drop them off and let them sink or swim; he made sure they reached a place of safety. He was a good man, whatever the law said.”

Rey played with her coffee cup, running her finger over the elegant china handle, staring with unseeing eyes. “That is…” She shrugged and looked back up at Leia. “I don’t know what to say. I never really thought about those people got here, but I guess they had to somehow and they needed someone like your husband. We got lots of immigrants in Jakku, legal and illegal, but it was what they did when they got here that I always thought about, not about what ship they came over on and who brought them.”

“After we married we started a fund to help asylum seekers but I don’t think that ever quite satisfied Han’s rebellious spirit. And in the mean time, I became a headmistress! We really didn’t make sense as a couple but we made it work most of the time.”

Rey laughed along with her because that was expected of her but she was tiring rapidly and she still hadn’t asked the one question that she needed to ask. The evening had proved unexpectedly emotional.

“Well, that seems to be going well for you,” she said, attempting a subtle change of subject. “AGS is one of the best schools in the country!”

“It is, isn’t it?” Leia replied, perfectly happy to move to more neutral territory. “Of course, it is highly selective which does have something to do with it, but it really does offer an unparalleled education, even when compared to private schools.”

“Yeah,” Rey agreed. “I mean, we get more students into Oxbridge each year than St Corellia’s do, don’t we?”

“That certainly has been the trend.” Leia leaned closer to Rey on the sofa. “Just between the two of us, but St Corellia’s isn’t half as academic as it markets itself. I was a governor there for years; I know what I’m talking about!”

“I’m sure! So, how’s this year looking? For Oxbridge, that is. What sort of numbers do we have?”

* * *

Rey stayed another half an hour and the conversation never strayed beyond school gossip - how the sports teams were doing, how amazing the school musical would be, the PTA Snow Ball at the end of term (which Rey _really_ should attend) and whether mobile phones should be banned in the canteen.

It was eleven o’clock when Rey finally twigged that it was up to her to graciously draw an end to the evening and managed to avoid trying to think of an appropriate phrase by involuntarily giving a jaw-splitting yawn. Fortunately, Leia had a sense of humour and didn’t seem to mind.

In the hall, Threepio brought Rey her leather jacket which she shrugged into with relief.

“Tell me,” said Leia, “do you actually have a motorbike? I’ve been wondering ever since you joined the school! How are you getting home? Do you want me to call a taxi?”

“It’s fine, thanks. I do actually have a bike. It’s not a fashion statement!”

Leia chuckled. “You’re a woman of many parts, Rey. Physicist, hockey player, northerner, and now a biker! What model is it? Han was a biker in his spare time so while mostly I would just nod and smile while he was talking about it I do know a little.”

“Honestly, mine’s a piece of junk - a 70s Millenium Falcon. I mean it,” she added at Leia’s sudden, arrested look, “I literally found it in a junk yard in Jakku. I’d never have been able to afford something new.”

“A 70s Millenium Falcon,” repeated Leia. “That was Han’s model.”

Rey looked at her in surprise. This was some coincidence. “Wanna see mine?” she asked awkwardly.

“Sure. Why not?” She followed Rey outside and they crunched round the side of the house to where she had left the bike, an outside light illuminating them as they turned the corner.

“There you go!”

The odd look was back on Leia’s face. She reached out and touched one of the handlebars with something almost like reverence. “This brings back memories.”

“Like I said, it’s garbage,” said Rey with a mix of self-deprecation and pride, “but, like, it’s my garbage.”

“And you love it.” Leia pulled her hand away and stuck it in her trouser pocket. “You and Han. You’d have got on.”

“I wish I could have met him,” replied Rey sincerely as she clipped on her helmet. “Well, thanks so much for dinner and everything, Leia. It’s been great.”

“No, thank _you_ , Rey. You must come again. Now, you drive safely!”

“Yes, cap’n!” Then she cringed. What had made her say _that_? Why couldn’t she just stop on a good note before blurting out something stupid and showing just how unsophisticated she really was? “Sorry, I mean, thanks. Sorry. See you on Monday!”

But Leia was shaking her head and chuckling and didn’t seem to mind at all. “Have a good weekend, Rey!”

She waved her off and Rey’s final impression as looked back before driving out of the gate was of a diminished figure dwarfed by the large, dark house.

She had certainly got to know Leia better over the course of the evening, which she supposed was the point, but overall she had more questions now than she had had before she had gone. The Skywalkers were certainly one hell of a weird family. In the meantime, she thought as she slammed the front door shut and then winced in case Finn was sleeping, she had something she had to do before she could sleep herself.

Fortunately a bass beat coming from Finn’s room suggested he was still up and Rey went straight to her room and flung herself onto her bed, pulling out her phone.

 **  
** **Rey**  
39 for Ox 27 for Cam  
1 going 4 organ scholarship at both  
 

Two minutes later, she got a reply.

 **  
** **Kylo**  
Thank you. This means more than you can imagine.

 **Rey  
** snoke on ur back? Fuck that guy

 **Kylo  
** If only.

 **Rey  
** Sorry 4 swearing. didnt think  
ur a headmaster

 **Kylo  
** I’m not YOUR headmaster.

 **Rey  
** Wish you were?

  
(Why had she written _that_?)

 **  
** **Kylo**  
Yes, actually. You’re wasted at a place like Alderaan Grammar.

 **Rey  
** LOL wasted at 1 of the actual top schools in the country? ok then  
but thanks I guess

 **Kylo  
** It’s easy to teach children who want to be taught.

 **Rey  
** all kids want 2 be taught. if urs dont then thats on u not the kids  
im going 2 bed.  
its too late for this

 **Kylo  
** * It’s  
Sorry, I don’t mind the swearing but your lack of grammar is incredibly aggravating.

 **Rey  
** Your face is aggravating. :) :) :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Center Parcs** \- a kind of holiday resort found in various places round England in the woods - cabins, outdoor activities, relaxing and family friendly etc.  
>  **School governor** \- interested parties (teachers, parents, local supports) who have an important role in and control over the overall direction of a school. A higher authority than the headteacher.  
>  **PTA** \- Parent Teacher Association  
>  Both the Jeremy Corbyn anti-semitism controversy and the revelation of the Rotherham child abuse scandal are real things in recent British news.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Simple things  
> But one thing's clear:  
> It's fate that brought us here..." (Quartet at the Ballet, _Anastasia_ )
> 
> In other words, fairy godmother Rose Tico ensures Rey goes to the ball.

“So basically, it’s, like, a classic tale of star-crossed lovers and, like, he’s a douche to begin with but when he meets her, she’s, like, ‘no way I’m getting with you’ so he knows he has to up his game so he becomes a better person so he can deserve her.”

Kylo, his chin thoughtfully supported by his hand, was frowning. “Have you even read _Pride and Prejudice_ , Simone?”

“Yeah, obviously. Because that was, like, a summary, right?” She appealed to the other two students.

Billie, sitting on her hands to prevent herself from raising one despite it only being a class of three, immediately took this as a sign to interrupt. “Right, first up, this is not _Romeo and Juliet_. These are not star-crossed lovers. As Lizzy tells Lady Catherine, she is a gentleman’s daughter and he is a gentleman. Their statuses in society are technically the same. Besides, it’s not like their families hate each other or anything. There is literally nothing wrong with them getting together except their own issues and Lady Catherine’s disapproval. Secondly, this idea that Darcy is some kind of bad boy who changes because of Elizabeth is perpetuating that dreadful patriarchal stereotype that the love of a good woman can make a man change when we all know that only the man himself can choose to change his behaviour and Jane Austen knew that well enough. And thirdly-”

“Okay, okay, _Hermione_. I get it, you think I’m stupid. Sir, she’s talking over me!”

Kylo, who had been eyeing the new mail symbol on the Outlook icon on his laptop, reluctantly turned back to the students. “Well, she’s right.”

The third student, silent up till now, made a big show of unfolding his limbs from his chair and stretching. “Look, it’s not like I want to criticise or anything, sir, but none of us actually mentioned _Pride and Prejudice_ on our personal statements and none of us are studying it for A Level, so why are we even discussing it?”

“Yeah!” agreed Simone.

“You want to know why we’re discussing arguably the most famous novel in the English language in a session designed to prepare you for interviews to study English literature at Oxford or Cambridge?” drawled Kylo. “If you even have to ask, then the chances of you getting in are slim.”

“Sam hasn’t even read _Pride and Prejudice_!” exclaimed Billie.

“What? Jane Austen’s for girls. It’s all romance stuff. I’m more of a Jack Kerouac kind of guy.”

“Oh dear god,” she muttered. “You are both so dumb.”

Kylo stood up. “I think we’ll leave this here. I suggest you all go away and read _Pride and Prejudice_ and a few works of basic Austen criticism by next week - I’ll email you some articles. Come prepared to discuss them intelligently or don’t bother turning up.”

“You want us to read an entire novel _and_ some articles by next week?” said Simone. “But I’ve got my Russia coursework draft due!”

“Oh, I’m sorry, is that too much work for you?”

“You do know you get an essay a week at Cambridge and you have to do all the reading for it in that time?” Billie pointed out.

Sam muttered something that could have been “Shit” under his breath. Kylo chose to ignore it.

“Go home and get reading,” he ordered them. “I know these interviews are meant to be looking for potential but based on today, they’re going to have to dig deep.”

They gathered up their coats and bags and shuffled out of his office in various degrees of misery and frustration. Billie went last and paused at the door. “Sir,” she asked more tentatively than she had said anything so far, “do you think any of us have a chance at all?”

“You might,” he replied bluntly. “You’re not unintelligent, you can talk passionately - and you’re black. Fulfilling their diversity quotas won’t harm you. But you won’t get in by just parroting basic interpretations and having attitude.”

Billie’s mouth twisted. “I’ll take what I can get and I’ll work on that,” she said eventually. “Have a good evening, sir.”

“You too.”

She closed the door behind her and Kylo slid back down into his deep leather seat and closed his eyes. Did the school’s Oxbridge success in English really rest only on these three? If the applicants for other subjects were this uninspiring, then they really had no hope of pleasing Snoke or matching the grammar school in numbers or success rate.

He groaned. It had been a long day with this after school interview preparation session straight after lessons being just the icing on the cake. It was not as if he had any plans that he wanted to rush home for - unless watching _Killing Eve_ counted as plans. But Snoke had rung that morning and given him a distaste for his office. His skin was crawling with the desire to escape somewhere different, even if that was just his own flat. Or perhaps he would take his marking to the pub that evening for a change of scene.

Before he started packing up, he clicked on Outlook to check what email had come in while he had been with Billie, Simone and Sam. Perhaps it might be from Rey, said a small voice he ignored. They had not emailed since they had found each other on WhatsApp and she had been silent for a while now even there. He had a feeling he had offended her somehow. It would hardly be surprising.

The email wasn’t from Rey. It was far worse. It was from his mother.

With a determination as forced as the quick ripping off of a plaster on a not-quite-healed wound, he clicked on the message.

 

 **From:** lorgana@sch.ags.co.uk  
**To:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**Subject:** AGS Snow Ball

It has been such a long time since you’ve come to the grammar school but you are always welcome. You never know, you might find something to like one of these days.

\--

Ms L. P. Organa  
Headmistress  
Teacher of Politics

 

There was an attachment to the email. Kylo clicked on it warily. It was a PDF of a poster advertising the upcoming Snow Ball.

A dark blue background showed a snowy forest, text written on larger snowflakes. The snowflake text informed him that the Snow Ball was open to all parents, teachers and alumni of Alderaan Grammar School and would be raising money to be divided equally between new student lockers and a teenage mental health charity. There would be a raffle, an open bar and music provided by the Alderaan Angels a capella group.

Kylo snorted. _Well, that sounds like a truly shit evening_ , he thought. There was absolutely no way he was going. If his mother really thought she was going to effect some kind of reconciliation with him at a public, school event, she had another thing coming. She never had known how to separate the personal from the professional. _You might find something to like?_ What the fuck? He was almost tempted to show up and ignore her out of spite.

* * *

 

“Balls are really not my thing,” said Rey over takeaway Chinese one Friday evening. “Fancy dresses, making small talk - Jesus Christ, _dancing_ \- it’s not me at all.”

“But you _have_ to come!” said Rose. “I’m not going to go and be the only girl from Physics there.”

“I didn’t know you were so keen on this sort of thing either,” Rey replied.

Rose gave an awkward shrug, her eyes drifting towards Finn before they returned to Rey. “I just thought it would be fun for us all to go together. You know, as friends. Besides, it’s all for a good cause.”

“Gotta get those Year 8s their new lockers!” put in Finn with a grin.

“Finn wants to go, you can’t abandon him!”

“Finn just likes having an excuse to wear a tux and drink prosecco,” retorted Rey, giving him a friendly shove. “Unlike me, he actually enjoys the high life.”

“What can I say? I’m high maintenance. Seriously though, Rey, you should come. It’s not that fancy but it is good fun; I went last year.”

Reason two hundred and forty seven why Rey didn’t do relationships or dating or even feelings: conversations like this. She couldn’t tell if Rose really wanted her to come or if she just wanted to guarantee Finn went with her; she was playing some sort of game to try and get Finn to go with her to the ball without being obvious about it but she was so subtle that Finn still had absolutely no idea she had any feelings for him at all.

“I don’t have anything to wear,” she said, stalling.

Rose brightened immediately. “We can go shopping! What sort of thing do you like? What sort of prom dress did you have?”

Rey stared at her. “Prom? In Jakku?”

“You did have a prom? Or some sort of leavers’ do, right?”

Finn was grinning and shaking his head. “Oh, we had something. It was pretty shitty.”

“And I didn’t go.”

Rose looked horrified and then determined. “Okay, next weekend we are going dress shopping and you, my dear, are _definitely_ going to the ball.”

Rey groaned and reached for the tv remote. “Whatever. I want to watch _Killing Eve_ and try to pretend I’m not agreeing to this.”

And so, the following Saturday, Rose dragged Rey out to the large shopping mall outside the next town and forced her into prom dress after prom dress as if doing so could make up for missing the joy of Jakku High’s leavers’ prom.

“So what did you do instead?” Rose asked her over a celebratory burger, once a shiny, ice-blue floor length dress had been purchased, Rey having got desperate to stop trying things on and willing to plump for whatever she happened to be wearing at the time.

“Hmm,” she considered. “I was probably getting high and screwing Ed Griggs and Jack Florescu’s elder brother in Jack’s brother’s car in the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ car park.”

Rose stared at her, unsure if she was joking or if she needed to be genuinely appalled.

Rey shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t do that sort of thing any more. Though it did feel good to stick it to the Jehovah’s Witnesses.” She took a large bite of her burger.

“You really didn’t have a great time when you were growing up, did you?”

“Nope. But at least I get to go to prom now and wear a pretty dress and bop around to Queen songs with the parents of my students! Bring it on!”

Rose looked troubled.

* * *

 

The half term between the beginning of November and the Christmas holidays was long and dreary. Bonfire night had come and gone, bringing only one evening of warmth, fire and sparks and mulled wine - which Rey had had to miss, being laid up with a miserable head cold and bad cough while Finn, Rose and their other grammar school friends had gone along to the bonfire and funfair on the Cathedral Green. Her dinner with Leia, coming when she had just about got over her cold had been a good break from the unrelenting misery of the time of year. For otherwise there was nothing but marking and planning, interspersed with freezing hockey practices in the dark, parents evenings and open evenings meaning supper at school and fourteen hour work days, and a continual stream of illness among both teachers and students.

The honeymoon period was wearing off and Rey felt ground down by her responsibilities and the heaviness of her timetable now that she was no longer an NQT. She messed up an aspect of planning for the Junior Physics Challenge and had to send grovelling emails to the other schools involved, rebook an eminent scientist to judge it and cried in bed that evening because she had _so_ wanted to get it all right. The days were short and it felt like she never saw daylight and the marking that she had been getting through so efficiently in September took twice as long, until she ended up night after night pouring over example sheets until the small hours, her eyes swimming with tiredness. One week at the end of October was hardly enough time to recharge before the long slog to Christmas.

She knew she had no right to be sarcastic towards Rose, who had done nothing to deserve it, but she was far too tired to be able to maintain a cheerful outlook all the time. She tried so hard the effort of doing so only exhausted her more, and it was more important to appear in control at school than at any other time. She was determined not to fall into any kind of mental spiral - it had happened before - and in her efforts to prove to herself that this year she was doing better and that everything was well and that she was happy and coping and strong, she ignored all the warning signs Maz had reminded her to look out for. AGS was her dream job, she was a good teacher, she was no longer in therapy - nothing was allowed to go wrong.

November finally ended and the countdown to the Christmas holidays began. Christmas lights went up in the town centre and the Cathedral started advertising its extra services, a tree appeared to the side of the stage in the school hall and things started to look up. The end was in sight and the students began to demand games and films in lessons, several weeks before they had any right to them. Before Rey could climb into Finn’s car and drag herself to Takodana and the home comforts of Maz’s for two weeks, however, she had the Physics Challenge to oversee, the school musical to watch and before either of them, the Snow Ball.

The ice-blue dress was pretty but constricting. Standing in front of her mirror while Rose picked out the appropriate make-up to put on her, she wondered what was the point of having a prom dress design where the wearer could barely move her legs, let alone dance. The colour was unusual for her, as she usually preferred neutral browns, whites and beiges and she kept pulling up the straight neckline, feeling exposed and afraid that it might slip. She rolled her shoulders and hunched.

“Relax!” chided Rose, with a laugh. She was already ready in a knee-length vibrant pink 1950s style dress with bright and fun heels and she looked stunning. Rey felt like an awkward, blue giraffe next to her.

“Come and sit down and I’ll do your make-up. Are you sure about wearing your hair like that? You don’t want to do anything different?”

Rey considered. The three buns were neat and kept her hair out of her face. Besides, she had always worn her hair like this. But perhaps Rose was right; it would be wrong to wear her day style in the evening. “What do you suggest?”

“You could tie a bit of it back so it’s off your face but keep the rest of it loose?”

In for a penny, in for a pound. “Okay, try it.”

Twenty minutes later, she was ready and Rose made her stand in front of the mirror.

“You look so pretty, Rey,” her friend said softly.

Rey knew she had no eye for this sort of thing but she did look… softer somehow. And the dress was pretty, even if it was more the sort of thing a teenager would wear than someone of her age. Wearing her hair down really changed the way her face looked; she was not sure if she liked it. Rey shivered and immediately pulled on her old leather jacket over the dress - it would be cold out - and gave her neckline one more tug. “Come on, let’s find Finn. The taxi should be here soon.”

Finn was waiting for them in the living room and let out an appreciative whistle.

“Doesn’t Rose look amazing?” cried Rey immediately. “Give him a turn!”

Rose obliged, blushing, and Rey felt the satisfaction of having distracted any attention away from her and hopefully have given Finn a push towards noticing Rose.

The taxi was late. At school, Finn and Rose leapt straight out and Rey followed after paying the driver. By the time she had handed her jacket and bag to the sixth form prefect on door duty and gone to the ladies to check her hair, her friends had already gone into the hall.

It was strange being back at school in the evening, especially as only a few hours earlier she had been there in her lab coat running around doing last minute photocopying before the weekend. There was a hum of conversation coming from the hall and she took a deep breath to steady her nerves before entering.

The room was packed and when Rey entered, Poe was on the stage making some sort of announcement and looking very dashing as he did so. Not wanting to draw attention to herself, Rey sidled in and leaned against the wall by the door. Finn and Rose, only a few minutes ahead of her, must have managed to move further into the room before Poe started talking.

“...have been working very hard since the summer so they decided to give you a taster of what’s to come to encourage you to buy your tickets. You’re going to have to imagine the costumes, set and orchestra but without further ado, to start off this evening’s proceedings, the cast of _Anastasia_ , accompanied by Mr. Tredwin, performing the [Quartet at the Ballet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alOABw4ePZo)! That is the number you’re doing, isn’t it?”

Mr. Tredwin, the Head of Music, bobbed up from behind the grand piano to the side of the stage and nodded. “Absolutely! Thank you, Mr. Dameron. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. And do get your tickets to the show next week!”

Rey clapped politely as four students walked onto the stage and the lights dimmed, leaving them in spotlight. One of the boys she recognised from her A Level Physics class. Actually, she was rather intrigued to see how they did. _Anastasia_ had been her favourite film as a child, though this piece she did not recognise, and after months of hearing snatches of it through the window of the office, she wanted to know what an actual performance sounded like.

Mr. Tredwin launched into an accompaniment, part _Once upon a December_ , part some familiar ballet music. Rey took the opportunity to enjoy the decorations. Silvery strings and rods of lights had been strung all over the vaulted ceiling making it really feel like they were surrounded by falling snow. Tinsel and greenery was looped over all the portraits of famous founders and alumni. The room really had been transformed. Very Hogwarts. Rey was impressed despite herself. She could not forget that she was in school surrounded by parents who would probably get drunk and dance embarrassingly within the next few hours, but still she felt glad she had come for now.

The first girl, a red-head who was presumably playing Anastasia herself, stepped forward to sing and Rey turned her attention back to the stage.

“ _Can this be the evening?_  
_Can this be the place?_  
_Am I only dreaming_  
_Looking at her face?_  
_Everything I've wanted suddenly so clear!_  
_My past and my future so near!_ ”

As she was singing, the door opened with a quiet creak behind Rey and another late-comer slipped in to stand next to her until progress through the room became possible again. She ignored them until after Anastasia finished and then turned towards them to check if they had enough room.

But when she raised her head, her breath caught in her throat.

“ _You_!”

It was him - the angry Starkiller English teacher from the Cathedral cafe and the hockey match. He was standing right next to her, taller even than she had thought him before. Tall, and broad and dressed in a blood red shirt so dark it was almost black underneath a well-fitting dinner jacket. His face was pale and chiselled, his hair wavy and gleaming and he was looking at her - oh, he was looking at her quite differently to the glare she remembered. He was looking at her as if he had seen her before in some quite different context. As if they knew each other far better than they did.

“It is you,” he breathed, almost with reverence, his eyes locking onto hers as if he physically couldn’t look away.

On stage, the second singer stepped forward and started their verse. Rey heard him as if from underwater.

“ _Next to me this frightened girl_  
_Holding tight as the dancers whirl_  
_Keep your nerve and_  
_See this through_  
_It's what you've come to do._ ”

She cleared her throat, rational thought intruding into her swimming head. She didn’t look _so_ weird, did she? Okay, she must seem almost unrecognisable compared to when he last saw her on the hockey pitch, but there was no need to stare like that. She tugged at the neckline of the dress yet again. More to the point -

“What are _you_ doing here?” she hissed at him under the cover of the musical accompaniment between verses.

He had the gall to look surprised. “Leia invited me.”

“Oh, you and Leia are such good friends? Right, I can totally see that.”

The surprise on his face seemed to deepen. “We… go back a long way. I wouldn’t call it friendship exactly. But it’s a friendly gesture on her part. Besides, I used to go to this school. My presence here is entirely legitimate - parents, teachers, alumni it said on the poster.”

“You used to-”

She broke off because the second girl had started singing her verse and it seemed rude to talk over her, even in a whisper.

“ _See that girl_  
_Could it be..._  
Don't be ridiculous!  
_I refuse to dream_  
_I refuse to hope_  
_I must stop believing_  
_I will ever find her…_ ”

“You used to go here? And now you’re at Starkiller?”

“Yes,” he replied, frowning slightly but without any antagonism, despite her disbelieving tone. “Only for a few years. I haven’t actually been back for a long time. It’s… strange.”

The fourth singer sang his part and Rey used it as an excuse not to reply.

“ _She's near at hand_  
_Yet here I stand_  
_My heart and mind at war..._  
_The times must change_  
_The world must change_  
_And love is not_  
_What revolution's for!_ ”

The song moved into its final section as the singers began to sing duets and then all together, the accompaniment built up, Mr. Tredwin pounding at the keys of the grand piano as if he could somehow recreate the power of a full band by enthusiasm alone, and the singers added simple dance movements up on the stage, swapping partners and waltzing several steps as they sung. Rey’s eyes were drawn back to watching them, but she was profoundly conscious of the Starkiller teacher at her side, his jacket sleeve almost but not quite touching her bare arm - but she felt just as aware of the space between them as she would have done of actual contact, perhaps more.

The performance came to an end and the room burst into applause and appreciative chit chat. Rey joined in and a beat after her, the Starkiller teacher also clapped his hands slowly together several times. The singers took a bow and Leia, resplendent in a modest, navy dress, her hair twisted into an elegant bun, mounted the steps to the stage, still clapping. At her side, the English teacher sucked in a breath.

“Look, it’s your best friend, Leia Organa!” Rey jibed at him and earned herself a brief look filled with offended incomprehension. “Why don’t you give her a wave?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” he snapped back.

“Suit yourself.”

Why was he even talking to her? He had made his disapproval of her quite clear already and beyond those two meetings, they simply didn’t know each other at all. She couldn’t wait for the ball to get moving so she could escape him and find Finn and Rose. He made her uncomfortable - in more than one way.

“What a wonderful performance that was!” Leia was saying, once the applause died down. “Thank you to Sara, Josh, Aoife and Winston for coming along tonight to give us that wonderful teaser for next week’s performances and to Mr. Tredwin and all the Music department. Prefects will be selling tickets tonight or you can buy them through the ParentPay system online. Don’t delay though - I’m sure they will sell out quickly! And now,” she began, looking out over the hall, but whatever she was going to say died on her lips as she looked straight at Rey. The colour drained from her face and for one heart stopping moment she seemed to look as if she would stumble and fall.

Rey opened her mouth, wanting to say something, even from the back of the hall over the heads of over a hundred people. What on earth had she done? Had the fact that she really didn’t have the breasts to pull off a strapless dress finally caught her out and she was flashing half the staff, a large number of parents and several prefects? Her hand flew to her chest - but the dress and her modesty were safe. Then it occurred to her that Leia might not be looking at her after all, but at the English teacher, who had far less right than her to be here. She glanced over at him, saw that he was staring straight back at Leia, his jaw set but his expression otherwise unreadable in profile.

Leia’s hesitation was over in a second. Probably everyone else simply thought she had needed to clear her throat.

“And now, the real business of the ball must start. Help yourselves to drinks and nibbles and I hope you enjoy tonight’s entertainment, provided by our very own a capella group, the Alderaan Angels.”

“Bloody Glee club,” muttered the English teacher, provoking an unexpected smile from Rey, though she looked away from him so that he wouldn’t see.

“Do have a wonderful evening and long live Alderaan Grammar!” finished Leia and left the stage.

“Not a fan?” Rey asked, raising her eyebrows.

“I’m not a fan of any of this fake, happy school spirit stuff. It’s all a ploy to get people to give money to the school. You must see that. I pity the parents who think this is actually a good night out.”

“Well, you’re here. Anyway, fun as it is listening to you trashing the event you’ve paid to come to - so, I guess, actually, that makes _you_ the biggest sucker of them all, right?  - well, fun as this has definitely been, I think I’m going to go find my actual friends. So-”

“Hi, Miss Smith!” cried a perky voice at her elbow. “Do you want a drink?”

It was a prefect, another one of Rey’s A Level students, carrying a tray of prosecco. Rey was unable to escape just yet.

But perhaps the alcohol would help. She took a glass and suppressed a sigh.

“Thanks, Anisah. You’re doing a great job. What did you think of the performance?”

“So good. Can’t wait to see it! Josh was -”

“I’ll have one of them too, thanks,” interrupted the English teacher, leaning past Rey to take a glass, his arm brushing against hers and making her shiver involuntarily.

“Oh, there you go, sir. Sorry! Well, miss, wasn’t Josh great?”

“He was!” Rey agreed, determined to ignore him. “I didn’t know he was in the show, let alone had such a main part. He’s playing Dimitry, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Well, I should be getting on. Lots of people wanting prosecco!” She began moving off into the crowd and then hesitated and turned back. “Loving the dress by the way, miss. You look really nice. See you later, miss!”

Rey blinked after her, feeling far more pleased and genuinely heartened than by any other compliment she could have received from anyone else. “Wow, thanks, that’s really nice of you, Anisah! See you later!” she said as she moved away.

“You do, you know,” said a low voice behind her and she spun round with a question on her lips. “Look really nice.”

He had the same look on his face as earlier and Rey felt her mouth dry up and her cheeks flame. Never mind listening from underwater, she now felt scalded by the intensity of his gaze. She dropped her eyes. “Oh,” she muttered, swallowing. “Thanks.”

She needn’t have bothered replying at all, for his attention was no longer on her.

“You came,” said Leia’s voice, cool and calm, behind her. Rey jumped to the side out of the way.

“Hello, Leia,” said the English teacher, in a voice that tried to be equally measured, but Rey could hear a tremor in it. Her eyes darted from one to the other, as rapidly as if watching a table tennis match. She sipped her prosecco.

“I didn’t expect you. You never RSVPed.”

“Would you have rolled out the red carpet if I had? I am a distinguished guest, after all.”

 _Distinguished guest_? Who the fuck did he think he was to talk to the Headmistress of Alderaan Grammar School in that way?

Leia only pursed her lips. “RSVP or not, I’m glad you came. It’s always good to see you.”

“Don’t flatter yourself; I didn’t come for you.”

This seemed an odd thing to say considering he seemed to hate the entire event and everything about it and there was a tense silence, each of them making a strong effort not to meet the eyes of either of the others. Rey wished to disappear altogether but felt she couldn’t without making it obvious that she had been there in the first place. Then Leia’s eyes slid to the side and took her in. “I see you’ve already been introduced to Rey Smith, our newest addition to the Physics department.”

“Yes, we’ve met,” said the English teacher.

“I wouldn’t say ‘introduced’ exactly,” said Rey.

“Well then, I suppose the honours lie with me,” said Leia, a touch of constraint in her voice. “Rey, this is Kylo Ren, the Headmaster of Starkiller Academy.”

“Oh fuck off,” said Rey to nobody in particular, not feeling nearly as surprised she ought to have done, and drained her entire glass of prosecco in one go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Personal statement** \- 4000 character personal essay on why a university applicant wants to apply for a particular subject. Sent to all universities applied to as part of the UCAS form.  
>  **Parents evenings and open evenings** \- I think parents evening is the equivalent of parent teacher conference. Open evenings are when prospective students and parents come to look round the school.  
>  **NQT** \- Newly Qualified Teachers get a timetable reduction and a mentor to help them in their first year of the job. Rey no longer has this because she is in her second year. It's a tough year, especially if you're starting in a new school as well.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who is reading and supporting this fic - I appreciate every single one of you! If you have a tumblr, do come and find me at [@misscrawfords](http://misscrawfords.tumblr.com). I also have a _Growing Beyond_ playlist on Spotify for songs mentioned in the text, that inspire me or I listen to when writing. It's mostly the _Anastasia_ Broadway Cast Recording and covers from _Riverdale_ but you can find it [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1pid2FOdbmdpYWVyg0T7xc).
> 
> Sorry not sorry for the cliffhanger! ;-)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> School discos are the worst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so incredibly sorry for the massive delay in updating. School got really, really busy. But I have a new laptop so writing is easier now and, just like my protagonists, I only have two and a bit weeks of school left! So I wrote this chapter instead of planning tomorrow's lessons... whoops.
> 
> One more note before launching into this chapter - you might want to play the songs mentioned in this chapter as you read. They have surprisingly Reylo appropriate lyrics!
> 
> Enjoy!

_ “Well then, I suppose the honours lie with me,” said Leia, a touch of constraint in her voice. “Rey, this is Kylo Ren, the Headmaster of Starkiller Academy.”  _

_ “Oh fuck off,” said Rey to nobody in particular, not feeling nearly as surprised she ought to have been, and drained her entire glass of prosecco in one go. _

The English teacher -  _ no _ , Kylo fucking Ren - had the nerve to look nonplussed. As if he didn’t know why she wanted to whack him over the head with her prosecco glass, Anne Shirley style.

Leia also looked surprised and uncertain, making Rey regret her unprofessional outburst. 

“Sorry, Leia - sorry. I don’t know why I… I just… didn’t know who I’d been talking to.”

Now both of them were looking at her with remarkably similar expressions of bemusement, their heads tilted at identical angles. This was a nightmare. This was hopefully a literal nightmare. Any minute now the ground would open up and swallow her whole and she would wake up in her bed at home. Or maybe she’d died and this was the Bad Place. Where were the giant shrimp? Oh god, she really shouldn’t watch Netflix with Finn so late at night…

“Excuse me, Leia, could I have a moment please?”

It was Holdo, resplendent in a long dress the colour of her hair, suddenly appearing at Leia’s side. 

“Yes, of course.”

Rey watched her murmur an apology, shoot Kylo Ren a sharp and undecipherable look, and move away with her assistant. Then, with Leia gone, she was left alone with Kylo Ren and the feeling of struggling underwater abruptly disappeared, leaving her acutely conscious of her situation. She blinked at him, still trying to understand how the person who had been texting her all these weeks, who had a sense of humour, who was really quite helpful when she had a teaching problem - how that could be the same person who had thought she’d only been hired because she was a woman. What was his game? Why had he lied? What a jerk.

“Dance with me,” he said, not lessening Rey’s sense of utter confusion and holding his hand out as if they were in some kind of period drama and he was inviting her to join a waltz.

“Like hell am I going to dance with you!”

“Oh.” He didn’t seem to have a back-up plan for being rejected. “Well. I guess we can talk.”

“ _ Talk _ ? Why on earth would I want to-”

But just then she caught sight of a flash of neon pink through the crowds. Rose had finally found her and was approaching, her eyes on Kylo Ren, shooting Rey quizzical glances. That was not an introduction or explanation she wanted to make.

“You know what? Let’s dance!” She grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him after her onto the dance floor where middle-aged parents had started to boogie to  _ Sweet Caroline _ , as cringeworthy as would be expected.

They found a space and Rey started to awkwardly sway. She’d never gone to clubs much at university and she felt horribly self-conscious. Not to mention if she moved any more vigorously she’d probably have an accident with her neckline. And flashing her breasts at Kylo Ren while dancing to Neil Diamond was very far down her list of desirable outcomes for the evening.

That man was currently standing still, his head tilted as he listened to the band. Then he nodded. “It’s okay. We can do a slow jive to this.” He held his hands out again.

“A slow jive?”

“Yes. You said we should dance. Do you know how to jive?”

Rey stared. “Do I- are you for real? I mean, no. No, I don’t know how to jive. Why, do you?” she added rudely.

“Yes. I did some dancing when I was at school and university. Come on, Rey, I’ll show you.” He took a step back and then forwards and did a jigging motion to his right and then his left.

Rey kept staring. “Oh god, you’re serious. You’re actually…” She glanced away. Nobody else was trying to actually dance to the music. They were all earnestly bopping away and yelling, “Hands touching hands, reaching out…”

If she had only avoided clubs, she could not believe Kylo Ren had ever been to one in all his life. She swallowed and then, since there seemed no way out, she placed her hands in his, glaring into his eyes the whole time. “Okay, nerd. How do you do this thing?”

He tried to explain, pushed her in one direction then another and told her to take smaller steps, which seemed ironic when he was so large that just following him meant taking larger steps than her tight, floor-length dress allowed.

“You’re telling me,” said Rey through gritted teeth under the cover of the people round them shouting tunelessly along with the band, “that you learned ballroom dancing at university?”

“Yes. Also school. When I left this place after Year 9, I went to St Corellia’s. It was a pretentious sort of place.”

“You don’t say! So you learned dancing at St Corellia’s and then you practised at university? At Mustafar College in Arizona?”

A beat. “Yes.”

“Yeah right, sure you did. You’re not even that good.”

“It’s been a long time.”

“I can tell!”

The song came to an end and Rey tried to drop his hands but he tugged on them to hold her in place. “No - please, we’ve only just begun!”

A faster song started. “So we can jive to this too? What fun!” she retorted sarcastically.

“Yes. Exactly.”

Rey discovered that at a faster speed, the jive was a dance that was good if you were angry. There was a lot of stamping involved and you could glare at your partner at the same time. Which was important to maintain because he was staring at her too with an intensity that if she didn’t glare she wouldn’t know how to respond or even where to look.

“Why are you so hostile towards me?” he asked.

“What?”

“You’re always attacking me. Every time we’ve met. I’m trying to understand.”

“Excuse me? We’ve only seen each other twice and the first time you were rude and the second you just glowered at me over a hockey pitch. And now -  _ now  _ I discover you’ve been lying to me and making a fool of me for ages. And you’re wondering why I’m attacking you!”

“But we’ve been talking to each other so much. I thought you’d be glad to see me tonight. I came here - I came here for you!”

He looked away from her at this admission and swallowed. She could see his adam’s apple move and she averted her eyes too, feeling suddenly embarrassed, as if this was her fault. But no - it wasn’t! She wouldn’t let him manipulate her into feeling sorry when he was the lying liar who had lied.

“So what was your plan exactly? Rocking up and saying ‘Hey, surprise! That person you’re been sort of becoming friends with is actually the massive jerk you met at the start of term?’ Great plan, by the way. Flawless.”

He blinked and the warm fingers gripping hers twitched. “But you - you did know? You’re acting like you didn’t know I was Kylo Ren at all.”

“Er… because I didn’t?”

Several emotions passed across his face. Surprise, disappointment, concern, irritation. “So what were you doing texting a stranger? Do you know how dangerous that could be?”

Rey’s jaw dropped. “Wow, okay, grandpa, thanks for that. Wait, so you knew who I was?”

“Of course. Phasma pointed you out to me at the hockey match. And then your WhatsApp profile picture is your face. I thought you knew who I was. I’m Kylo Ren.”

He spoke with such arrogant assumption that Rey felt breathless at his audacity. Or maybe that was the combination of the dancing and the bodice of her dress. There was a lot to digest, not all of which reflected very well on her. So instead of considering just how foolish she might have been to open up to someone she did not actually know in person and who was, after all, the Headmaster of a rival school, she went on the offensive.

“Right, so you knew who I was the whole time and you never once thought about apologising for what you said to me in that cafe?”

“What did I say that needed apologising for?”

How -  _ how  _ \- could she have felt any kind of warmth towards this man?

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe implying I’m not a real physicist, that Leia only hired me for diversity, that-”

“Wait, no,” he interrupted her. “I didn’t mean it like that, Rey.”

“How exactly did you mean it?”

He stopped dancing but did not relinquish her hands, peering down at her with wide, dark eyes. She was not used to have to look up to people, even men. It was a strange sensation.

“Everything I was saying was true, about the lack of female Physics teachers and how other jobs pay better than teaching. And the fact that more women seem to be biologists - I don’t know why - women should be physicists! But that doesn’t make it not true. And schools have to take diversity into account, or they should. They need to provide role models for their students. Do you know, after we met, I looked up all the Physics teachers in the First Order schools in Alderaan and across all of them there are only two female Physics teachers. We don’t have any at Starkiller. And so I think the next Physics teacher we hire should be a woman…” He frowned. “What does it matter why or how you got the job provided you got it?”

Rey shook her head, mouthing wordlessly. 

“I didn’t mean any of it personally. And if you took it as such,” he added, leaning slightly towards her, “that can only be because it hit home. Maybe you’re not so devoted to teaching as you claimed you are. Maybe you feel inadequate. You shouldn’t. You’re a very good teacher; I can tell from every interaction we’ve had together. And whatever else I think about Leia, she’s obsessed with this school - she only ever hires the best.”

Rey was silent. She couldn’t work out if she had been complimented or insulted. And he was distracting her, making her want to trust him because his eyes were soft and his hair was soft and his chest was broad and…  _ urgh _ . 

But she was pretty sure she still hadn’t got an apology.

“You’re not,” she replied after a moment, “very good at reading social cues, are you?”

“What?” Then he looked away from her to something behind her and a look of consternation crossed his face. “Oh, I - I’ve got to go. I’m sorry, Rey - I can’t stay. I really - I really did come here to meet you and I wish - thank you.”

And then he turned around and pushed away towards the door, leaving Rey gaping after him, her heart pounding. She turned round to try to work out what had spooked him so much and saw only Leia and Amilyn talking to an older man she recognised as Dr. Tekka, the Head of Classics, the longest serving member of staff and not a teacher she had ever had reason to talk to. None of them were looking her way.

_ What the actual fuck? _

She was definitely in the Bad Place.

Then Rose was by her side, clutching her arm. “So, who was Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome over there?”

Rey shrugged expressively. “That was Kylo Ren.”

“ _ The  _ Kylo Ren? Demon headmaster of Starkiller? Who was a jerk to you over the Physics Challenge?”

“The very same.”

Rose craned her head round to where Kylo Ren had disappeared to. “And he wanted to dance with you?”

“Apparently so.”

“Wow.” Rose took this in. “So, he’s mean to you over email and then he shows up here and dances with you?”

“That’s about right,” said Rey, omitting the majority of their correspondence. “And then he just took off randomly in the middle of talking to me.”

“Did he leave his shoe?”

“What?”

“You know, the clock strikes midnight and Cinderella dashes out of the ball and-”

“Oh my god, no!” Rey sought refuge in giggling and then found she couldn’t stop. “It was so fucking weird, Rose. I don’t know what happened. Or what he was going on about. Or why he was here. Or why he wanted to dance.  _ So  _ weird.”

Rose had a funny look on her face as she half joined in with the laughter. “Yeah. Weird.”

Rey took a deep breath. She didn’t want to think about Kylo Ren anymore. He confused her and she needed time to adjust all her preconceptions about both her internet contact and the bad-tempered, darkly dressed English teacher.

“Where’s Finn?”

“Dancing,” said Rose immediately. “He’s with Poe and some of the other guys. You want to join us? You can show me whatever that weird thing you were doing with Kylo Ren was.”

“The jive, Rose, the jive. Did you know they used to teach ballroom dancing at St. Corellia’s?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Like on Strictly? You know, I’m actually not going to ask. Come on, let’s find Finn.”

Finn was at the centre of the dance floor with some of the other teachers in a big group. They welcomed Rey and Rose with cheers, especially when the Alderaan Angels began to do the introduction to Reach for the Stars _. _

“Yes! Love me a bit of S Club!” Poe pumped his fist. “This is for all of us and how it’s only two weeks till the holidays! Team AGS, circle!” He slung one arm round Finn’s shoulder and the other round Snap’s.

“C’mon everyone! Never ever forget that I got you and you got me…”

Rey linked arms with Rose and a young PE teacher called Jessika and joined in, letting thoughts of Kylo Ren disappear in solidarity with her colleagues and friends. Screw him and screw Starkiller! This was where she belonged.

But even when bouncing up and down in a big circle of her friends, she found that Reach was a song ideally suited to jiving and that if she tried to do the steps on her own then she had something to do with her feet to connect with the music and she felt less self-conscious.

The song came to an end and the circle broke with much out of breath laughter as the teachers made jokes about reverting to their teenage selves and memories of their own school discos. Rey had never gone to a school disco so she didn’t find much to laugh about and stood to the side, tugging up her neckline once more. There had been a few dodgy moments in that respect during the song…

Poe still had his arm round Finn and they seemed to be sharing some hilarious joke, but Rose wasn’t joining in the merriment either.

“I don’t think I’ve drunk enough for this,” she said to Rey. “I just keep thinking about how the prefects are here, and the parents.”

“Mmm,” agreed Rey. “Same. It’s not really my scene.”

Rose nodded, her eyes still on Finn and Poe. After a moment she said in an odd, constrained voice, “Finn is - I mean, is Finn…?”

Rey blinked and followed her gaze. “Gay? No, he’s bi.”

“Oh.” Rose’s mouth twisted as if she didn’t know whether this was good or not.

“He’s out,” Rey continued for the sake of something to say as Rose didn’t seem to be going to say anything else. “He doesn’t care who knows but he’s not, you know - he doesn’t go around wearing rainbow tracksuits to school or anything. He had a lot of issues with it when he first came out, being a rugby player and all. So he’s quite discreet. But he doesn’t hide it either.”

“I see.” Rose was still watching their friends. “Does Poe know?”

Rey suddenly felt very tired and the music and flashing lights above them were giving her a headache. “I don’t know. Hey, do you want to get out of here and get drunk back at my place?”

Rose immediately brightened up. “You know what? Yes. Let’s do that.”

“Good!” Rey grinned. “You go call a taxi and I’ll tell Finn we’re leaving.”

Rose nodded and elbowed her way out of the room while Rey dived toward Finn.

“Hey!” she said, awkwardly butting into whatever Poe and Finn were talking about.

“Peanut!” shouted Finn loudly and almost pounced on her like an excited puppy. She wondered how much he’d managed to drink while she was squabbling with Kylo Ren.

“It’s okay,” she replied, gently patting his arm and disengaging herself. “Rose and I are leaving. Just wanted to let you know.”

“Leaving?” exclaimed Poe with an expression of exaggerated distress. “But you can’t leave, Rey!”

“Sorry.”

“Are you okay?” asked Finn, his exuberance falling away slightly. “Do you want me to come too?”

“I’m fine,” she replied quickly. “Both of us are. Just not our scene. You stay and have fun.”

Finn was only too happy to agree and she gave him a quick hug before joining Rose out in the lobby. They found their coats and then stood outside while they waited for the taxi. The night air was cool but not too cold considering it was December and the breeze and quiet was welcome after the stuffiness of the hall.

For several minutes they were both silent, before Rose said quietly, “It’s a really lame party, isn’t it?”

“The lamest,” agreed Rey.

“Adults shouldn’t go to school discos. It’s just  _ wrong _ .”

“Yep.”

Rose nudged her shoulder against Rey’s. “I’m glad we’re friends. Thank you for leaving.”

Rey nudged her back. “It’s fine. I wanted to leave too.” A moment later, she grinned, thinking back to an earlier conversation they’d had and said, “So considering I never went to prom when I was at school, I’m still not convinced I’m missing out.”

Rose shook her head. “No, you’re not. I like the idea of it, the one you get in American teen movies, but the reality is always disappointing. I thought…” She trailed off and sighed. “I really like him, Rey.”

“I know.”

“I mean,” she continued, staring into the night and not looking at Rey, “I didn’t think he liked me that way but I thought maybe if I just continued to be  _ there  _ then eventually he’d notice me. I never even thought there’d be someone else. That it’d be-”

“I’m not sure there is,” Rey put in quickly before Rose could say her fears out loud. “They’re good friends. It never occurred to me either. Just because he could like a man doesn’t mean he automatically does. Anyway, is Poe even gay?”

Now Rose turned to look up at her incredulously. “He knows all the words to S Club 7! Are you blind?! And he has a little rainbow flag in the pencil jar on his desk. And until about two years ago he had a boyfriend.”

Rey had never been in Poe’s office. She shrugged. “Okay, so Poe’s into men. Finn might like him. I don’t know. But I think he’s mainly clueless. He’s not good at picking up on these things.”

Rose sighed again. “He’s not the only one, is he?” She glanced up at Rey again.

Rey nodded, thinking how fortunate it was that she didn’t date and was therefore spared complications of this kind. Having crushes on people and trying to navigate romance just seemed so difficult and with so much potential for being hurt and getting it wrong. Far better to eschew it altogether. She was very careful never to give off those kind of signals and it had worked very well for her, in that since a couple of occasions at university, nobody had ever tried anything with her.

Except perhaps…

But she was not going to think about that.

The taxi arrived and within fifteen minutes, Rose and Rey were back at the house. Rey let them in, they threw their coats on the back of the sofa and went into Rey’s bedroom.

“Pizza?” she suggested, fishing her phone out of her bag and opening Deliveroo.

“Best idea I’ve heard all evening,” said Rose, picking up her casual clothes and disappearing towards the bathroom to change.

Rey made the order and changed as well, hanging her prom dress up in the back of her wardrobe without any regret. When she emerged into the sitting room, Rose was already sprawled on the sofa and scrolling through Netflix. Rey got them both bottles of beer from the fridge and slumped next to her.

“What do you want to watch?” She felt the least she could do was let Rose choose.

“Something where it all ends happily and men aren’t pigs and there’s no disco music,” said her friend firmly and pressed play.

Six hours of  _ Pride and Prejudice _ . 

Rey groaned and pulled out her phone again. She had ignored the string of messages when she had looked earlier before ordering the pizza but now, safely away from her own thoughts and with Rose a comforting presence at her side, and under cover of the opening credits to the show and its annoyingly perky soundtrack, she thought she had better read them.

**Kylo  
** I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to leave so abruptly. I saw my old Latin teacher and, well, you could say that we don’t get on. I had no idea he was still teaching. It was very strange being back at the school. It affected me more than I thought it would. It was nothing to do with you.

**Kylo  
** I am really sorry if there was any misunderstanding on my end. I truly assumed you also knew who I was. It seemed inconceivable to me that you would message a Headmaster of another school in the way you did unless you already knew I was the person you had behaved so oddly towards in that cafe. But I now realise you were really offended by what I said. You’re right. I don’t always read social cues well.

**Kylo  
** I really do think you’re a great teacher. Whatever hang-ups you have about it, whatever it is that makes you so defensive, you need to let go of them. If we had a vacancy in the Physics department at Starkiller, I’d want you to take the job without any reservations. You’re wasted at AGS. If you want a school that’s challenging and looking to the future, you should join Starkiller. So you have to know I really did not mean to insult you. 

**Kylo  
** I don’t hate you at all and I hope you don’t hate me either.

**Kylo  
** I would really miss our conversations if you stopped replying.

 

Rey read these messages through several times, her feelings swinging between ambivalence and irritation, before turning off the screen of her phone and dropping it onto the sofa next to her, feeling a savage pleasure at leaving the messages on “Read”. She took a swig of the cold beer and turned her attention to the screen where Elizabeth Bennet was watching Bingley and Darcy galloping across a field.

Several hours later when Finn finally stumbled back home, he found the two girls asleep on the sofa, pizza boxes and beer bottles strewn around them, Rey’s phone down the side of the sofa with no battery, and Netflix playing Mr. Darcy’s first proposal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't think there are any British education references in here for once! As for Finn/Rose v Finn/Poe I have honestly no idea which I prefer for this fic because I ship them both! So probably neither will happen and Finn will remain oblivious. We'll see.
> 
> Come and find me on tumblr: [@misscrawfords](http://misscrawfords.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Reviews are absolute love!
> 
> Next chapter is one I've been waiting for for a long time... I hope you like _Anastasia_!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo realises something fairly obvious and the school musical forces Rey to come face to face with her past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been ages - I'm really sorry! Teaching can be really stressful and busy and I just lost motivation and ability to write for a while. But I'm back now and will update when I can. 
> 
> This chapter is basically 8000 words of angst and Rey suffering from poor mental health and not dealing with it very well. I hope that it works. It's not the kind of thing I usually write, but it's important to start to deal with. Please proceed with caution, however, if this is something you may find upsetting.

Days passed and Kylo Ren remained on ‘read’. Kylo returned to his conversation with Rey frequently over the weekend, his thumb hovering over his phone on the point of sending another messenger. A sense of pride, however, kept him from doing more than he had already done. Perhaps he had made things worse.  After all, apologising was a sign of weakness.

He spent Saturday afternoon in the cafe in the cathedral crypt where he had first met Rey in the hope that perhaps she went there to work regularly but she didn’t show. Sunday was raining too heavily for him to bother stirring from his flat but he could not stop thinking about her as he furiously pedalled and rowed in the home gym taking up his spare room, as he went through the motions of cooking stir-fry and as he forced himself to reply to the work emails that had come in over the weekend.

Why he cared so much was something he tried to avoid thinking about but nevertheless his mind kept returning to the question. She was different to other women he knew; she got under his skin. The truth was that he didn’t know any women except for the teachers at his school who treated him with respect if not fear. And Phasma, who barely counted. And his mother. Rey was in a whole other class of her own. She was bright and young and clever and there was something about the way her jaw set when she glared at him and the spark in her eye and the warmth of her fingers in his when they danced and the way she was sufficiently tall that he didn’t need to stoop too much to talk to her and yet small enough that she fit so neatly against him and…

Oh hell, he had a crush on her.

Kylo had forgotten what it felt like to have a crush on somebody. In the past, when he thought about it at all, he had rather supposed he didn’t like people in that way. And now that it seemed he did, he was not sure what to do about it if she wasn’t going to reply to his messages. Even if she did reply at some point, he was still not sure what he should do. Should he flirt with her? Or had he already been flirting? Did she even like him? Admittedly, all the signs pointed to her  _ not  _ liking him, but signs could be misleading. And one had to start somewhere. Or maybe he could just admire from afar. Perhaps they could become friends. It would be nice to have a friend. Even a beautiful, intelligent, single, female friend. Yes, that would be perfectly acceptable. Maybe he didn’t really fancy her, he just thought he did, because modern society was obsessed with sex and he didn’t have enough experience to make helpful comparisons.

Of course the fact that she wasn’t talking to him prevented any of this happening but he felt sure he could work something out. Poaching her to come and work at Starkiller so he could see her every day was a possibility. Then he’d be her boss, which could cause some complications, but they could at least talk to each other. How lovely it would be to see Rey every day at work! She hated injustice so she would be on his side against Snoke and that would be a great comfort.

So went Kylo Ren’s thought processes, in which he built up a lovely picture of a nebulous future romantic friendship with a beautiful woman called Rey who just happened to agree with him in every respect apart from odd occasions when they clashed in a witty way reminiscent of couples in classic literature. It was a pleasant fantasy and any communication from the Rey would have brought him down to earth sharply. But none came.

On Thursday, almost a week after the grammar school disco, Phasma came to visit Kylo with the minutes of the governor’s meeting the previous day. Having delivered her message, she seemed unusually reluctant to leave.

“You’re still here,” Kylo pointed out, surprised.

“Yes. Just wondering… did Harrison tell you about the Junior Physics Challenge yesterday?”

He blinked at her. That had… happened? Already? He had been so lost in his hypothetical future with Rey that he had forgotten what real Rey might be doing.

“Not seen him. Did anything happen worth reporting? Did we win?” He added a touch of insouciant sarcasm to his tone to show just how much he didn’t care.

Phasma shook her head. “AGS won. Always suspicious when the home team takes the trophy. There’s an article in the Alderaan Gazette today if you’re interested. Apparently it was a good day.”

“Snoke’s not going to be happy,” Kylo pointed out, torn between dread at the consequences of failure for himself, irritation at AGS once against proving themselves the better school and feeling a peculiar inner exaltation that Rey’s team had won.

Phasma turned to leave, shrugging. “Snoke’s never happy. He’s a moody old fart - and I don’t care if he’s listening in like the creep that he is.”

Kylo reached for his stress ball. “If that’s all…?”

“That’s all. Just thought you might like to know.”

“I don’t know why you’d think that!” he called after her, the door clicking shut. “I don’t care about the Physics Challenge! I’m an English teacher! It’s nothing to do with me!”

The door opened a crack again. Phasma stuck her head round it. “Don’t be an ass,” she snapped. “Five Starkiller students did very well in it, so I’m told, even if they didn’t win.”

Kylo resorted to throwing his stress ball hard at the door.

As soon as she had gone, he opened a new tab in his browser and brought up the report in the local newspaper.

_ Grammar School is a force to be reckoned with at Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge  _ read the headline with an attempt at wit.

There was a photo underneath it. Rey was there in a gleaming white lab-coat, her hair scraped back from her face, and she was beaming in triumph in a way that he had never seen when she was looking at him. On either side of her were the students on her team wearing medals. Three girls, two boys and ethnically diverse, Kylo noticed, rather impressed. He searched through his emails to find out who the Starkiller students were. All boys, all of Chinese or Indian origin. He felt rather depressed. He skimmed the article for more mentions of Rey.

_ “It’s been a fantastic day,” said Rey Smith, Physics teacher at Alderaan Grammar School and the organiser of this year’s event. “The students’ ideas have been so original and I think it’s fair to say that the future of Physics is a bright one. I can’t wait for next year!” _

“Ugh,” said Kylo to himself. “Nobody’s that happy about Year 8s making robot cars out of elastic bands.”

But he continued to stare at the photo for a long time. 

Later that day, when his teaching was finished, he took out his phone and stared at his messages to Rey, still no reply forthcoming from her. Yet again he considered sending her a message, but put his phone away and opened up his email instead.

**From:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**To:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**Subject:** Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Dear Rey,

I understand that congratulations are in order. I saw the article in the Alderaan Gazette; you must be very pleased the event went well.

Best wishes,  
Kylo Ren  
Headmaster

 

The reply came back almost instantaneously. 

 

**From:** rsmith@ags.sch.co.uk  
**To:** headmaster@starkiller.org  
**Subject:** Re: Aldershire Junior Physics Challenge

Thanks! The Starkiller team did very well too. You should be proud of your students.

Rey

 

Kylo, whose heart had leapt into his mouth when he saw her reply ping into his inbox, was left feeling confused and deflated. Like Benedick in the play he had just been reading with Year 10, he was sure there had to be a double meaning in the message but he had no idea what it might be.

* * *

The Physics Challenge was over. Rey had lived with it hanging over her almost since she had started at AGS with the result that she hardly knew what to do with herself now it was over. The last week after the ball had been particularly stressful. Keeping up with her regular teaching and marking and the report deadlines that took place that time of the year had been tricky while still dealing with last minute organisation. She had been sleeping an average of only five hours a night and by the time she had plastered an overly cheerful grin onto her face for the benefit of a local reporter at the end of the day, seen off all the visiting schools onto their respective coaches and handed the hall over to the cleaners and site staff, she was so emotionally and physically exhausted she barely managed to swing her leg over her bike and ride home to collapse with a fuzzy head and an odd desire to cry in front of her lesson plans for the following day.

She survived Thursday on autopilot before waking up on Friday, remembered she had a double lesson with her difficult Year 10 class and promptly burst into tears. Finn felt her forehead, overruled her objections and told her she wasn’t allowed to go to school and then left her to spend the day wrapped in a duvet on the sofa with a packet of Paracetamol at her side, shivering and watching a Korean drama Rose had recommended on Netflix. She barely took in the plot - something involving a shape-shifting monster travelling in time with an amnesiac princess - as intrusive thoughts bounced around her brain: she was letting the school down by not coming into work, her students would fail their exams because she wasn’t teaching them, she was therefore a bad teacher, she would probably get sacked and have to go back to her old school, but they probably wouldn’t take her either, her success with the Physics Challenge was just a fluke, everyone would think AGS had cheated because they had won when hosting the event, when she was sacked she wouldn’t be able to live with Finn any more but she wouldn’t anyway because Finn was going to get married to Poe or Rose and she would just be a third wheel, probably nobody even noticed she wasn’t in school, maybe being an amnesiac would be for the best, it wasn’t even as if she could remember where she came from or knew who she was, who was Rey Smith anyway, she was so  _ alone _ .

Having finally managed to circle round to her deepest fears and insecurities, her brain crowed in self-destructive triumph and she turned away from the TV and fell to sobbing into Finn’s Gryffindor cushion, her fingers clawing at the soft red material as if to draw it closer to herself in lieu of human contact.

Finn came in late after the usual staff trip to the pub on Friday evening. By this time, Rey had dealt with her feelings as best she could by trying to kill things in a video game. In fact, she had spent most of the time falling off a narrow staircase out of a dungeon and landing on some spikes over and over again, but at least it had been distracting.

“So you know the show next week?” Finn said, perching on the arm of the sofa.

Rey hummed an affirmative.

“We were discussing it in the pub and we’re all going to go on Thursday to support Rose. You want to join in? We bought tickets already but it’s unreserved seating so it won’t matter.”

Rey turned to stare at him, feeling the bottom drop out of her stomach. “But I have the final hockey practice of term on Thursday! You  _ know  _ I have hockey on Thursdays. Can’t we go on Friday?”

“But I’m not here on Friday!” Finn replied in consternation. “The rugby tour leaves early on Friday morning, remember?”

Rey did remember - now. Finn would be away all weekend. And perhaps if she had been in the pub, she might have made her case to the others and some people would have gone with her on Friday but as it was they were all going on Thursday and she couldn’t go on Thursday and they had forgotten about her, even Finn had forgotten about her…

Something of what she was feeling must have shown on her face because Finn rubbed a gentle circle on her shoulder. “Hey, Peanut, I’m sorry I forgot about your hockey. Look, I’ll go with you on Wednesday, if you like?”

Rey shook her head, preferring to wallow in misery than seek a compromise. “You’ve got your ticket, you go on Thursday. Besides, no-one wants to go on opening night - it’ll be like a dress rehearsal. It’s fine. I’ll go on my own. I mean, there’s bound to be other staff there on Friday for final night. It’s not like it’ll just be me in the audience.”

“Right.” Finn looked relieved. “You okay?”

Rey nodded and forced a smile. So she felt dead inside? Finn didn’t need to know that. “Just wish I could get out of this dungeon. I keep dying.”

Finn laughed. “Oh yeah, I remember that level, I remember that. I’ll show you tomorrow.” He split his jaw with a massive yawn. “I need to sleep. You should go too.”

“Probably.” She uncurled herself from the sofa, gathered the blankets, empty mugs and tissue boxes and made her way to bed, where she tossed and turned for several hours, imagining the fun time all her friends would be having on Thursday evening without her at the musical.

Saturday Finn had rugby training in the morning and played games with her all afternoon until she had extricated herself from the dungeon and succeeded in fending off an army of skeletons in the castle courtyard. Sunday she exerted herself to do some work for the following week as she was not ill enough to justify taking a second day off school, no matter how much she felt that she was pushing through a mental and physical fog just to achieve the simplest things. 

In the evening, Maz rang. Rey kept her tone light as she didn’t feel inclined to have a heart to heart. What was there to say? Maz wouldn’t want to listen to her complain about such petty things as her friends going to a school event on a different day to her. So when a prying tone came into her old foster mother’s voice, she denied anything was wrong.

“You should give Dr. Kenobi a ring,” Maz insisted. “You haven’t seen him since March, have you?”

“Because I don’t  _ need  _ to,” Rey retorted, sounding whiny even to her own ears. “I’m  _ fine _ . Just tired.”

“Well, you know best,” said Maz, in a tone that suggested that the opposite. “But you shouldn’t feel bad about making an appointment. You don’t need to be on the point of drowning to want a helping hand every now and then.”

“I’ll make an appointment if I need to. But I  _ don’t _ . Anyway, I don’t have time at the moment. Look, I have to go, these reports won’t write themselves. But I’ll see you soon, yeah?”

“Of course. I’m looking forward to having you and Finn home for Christmas. Take care of yourself, Rey.”

“You too.”

When they hung up, Rey kept hold of her phone for a minute, blinking away tears she couldn’t explain.

Finn glanced up from his laptop, where he had been pretending not to eavesdrop. “You know, if you want to talk…”

“I don’t!” she snapped, jumping up and going into her bedroom where she did not have to try to explain herself to the people who cared most about her.

_ It’s fine,  _ she told herself, sitting on the edge of the bed and hugging her pillow,  _ they wouldn’t understand. No-one would understand, and they’d be right not to. There’s no excuse to feel this way when I’ve got so much - I have the job I want, I have wonderful friends, I’m so extremely lucky to be here considering where I’ve come from. I don’t deserve any sympathy. I should be grateful. And what’s a bit of stress when I could be on the streets? They don’t know what it’s like - they can’t ever know - the extent I’m not like them. But it’s alright. I’ve always been alone. Alone is what I do best. _

There was some strength to be found in that thought and when Rey got up on Monday and put on her cream trouser suit, her black leather boots, and pulled her hair tightly back into its usual three buns, she felt confident of her ability to be able to fake efficiency and good humour. If there was one thing she was good at, it was wearing a mask.

It was a strange fact of teaching life that sometimes when Rey felt the most tired and low-spirited, she was the most effective. She forced her attention entirely on getting through the week. She took no nonsense with her classes, replied to emails straight away, marked an entire set of books in her lunch break, and submitted her tutor reports a full hour before the deadline. She also barely saw Rose as she was involved in final rehearsals for the  _ Anastasia  _ band, which was probably a good thing, as she was developing a deep and entirely unjustified resentment for the show.

On Thursday, she went to hockey practice as usual and by the time she got home Finn had already left for school again. Rey ordered pizza and watched another episode of Rose’s Korean drama (the shape-shifting monster hero was now a dragon stuck in the thirteenth century which the amnesiac heroine - now also cross-dressing as a knight - was under orders to kill) before deciding to go to bed before Finn returned. He would be off to the Isle of Wight with twenty teenage boys by the time she got up in the morning and that was definitely for the best. She couldn’t deal with people beyond the ones she had to see at school. Even Finn. Especially Finn, who had also spent time in an orphanage and with foster families, whose parents were dead, and yet had somehow come out of all that crap well-adjusted and kind. She loved him so much and she could not relate at all.

On Friday morning, she heard Finn shower and leave the house before 7am, turned over, and got another twenty minutes of pretending to sleep. When she did finally get up, she saw he had left her note which she read over her cereal.

_ Rey - _

_ Sorry not to see you last night but I hope you had a good evening. Anastasia was amazing - you’ll love it. Hope you have a great weekend - only half a week to go! :) :) _

_ Love you Peanut _

Rey wrinkled her nose at the nose and muttered, “I’m sorry, Finn,” though she was not entirely sure what she was sorry for. She simply  _ had  _ to get herself into a better frame of mind before she went to the show in the evening.  _ Anastasia  _ had been her favourite film as a child, after all. There had been a copy on video in the orphanage and it had been her go-to film whenever she ended up back there in between foster homes. She ought to be excited to see the stage musical, support her friend playing the trumpet, and have an evening out.

_ Get a grip, Rey,  _ she told herself as she hung up her lab-coat at the end of the day and made her way back to the empty house.  _ Enough wallowing.  _ She had the whole weekend to wallow alone at home if she liked but this evening she owed it to Rose to be entirely present and supportive. She had been faking it all week, she could damn well fake it one more night. And what was the thing they said about faking? Do it enough and eventually it won’t be faking at all. 

Rey wolfed down some dinner, changed into more comfortable jeans and a jumper and put on minimal make-up, caught between wanting to make an effort for her night out and feeling that there was no point. She slung on her leather jacket, checked herself out in the hall mirror and could see no sign of the heaviness that remained in her chest, took a deep breath, and left the house to return to school.

The evening was cold and dark, overcast with the threat of rain to come and the streets shiny with rain that had fallen earlier in the day. Rey was glad to park her bike and return to the warmth of the school entrance hall, now bustling with parents and students and their anticipation. It was not the first time that Rey had gone to something like this alone, but she felt acutely conscious of it this evening and even more conscious of having to pretend she didn’t care. If need be, she could always get out her phone and pretend to text.

Nevertheless, she had only been in the hall a few minutes in the queue to buy a programme, when she heard someone say her name. Turning round, she came face to face with none other than Ms Phasma from Starkiller Academy, looking intimidatingly perfect in a iron grey suit, a fashionable brunette at her side.

“It is Rey, isn’t it?” said Ms Phasma, managing to sound cool and aloof even when apparently being friendly. “How nice to see you again!”

“You too. How come you’re here?”

Ms Phasma raised her eyebrows and her companion surveyed Rey from head to toe with curiosity. “Don’t worry, I’m not here to sabotage anything, just to support local talent. Same as you, I imagine.”

“I guess so,” replied Rey. “That’s a nice thing to do.”

“You really shouldn’t see us as the enemy, you know,” she continued, “Off the hockey pitch anyway. We both want the same thing, after all. This is Bazine, by the way, my wife. Rey teaches Physics here.”

“Oh!” Somehow she hadn’t imagined Phasma taking part in anything so normal as marriage. “Pleased to meet you.”

“You too,” replied the glamorous Bazine in a soft foreign accent, leaning forward to kiss Rey on each cheek.

Ms Phasma was watching the exchange with a kind of detached amusement, her arms crossed over her chest. Rey, embarrassed and wrong-footed, wondered whether there was anyone involved with Starkiller Academy who wasn’t ridiculously good looking and faintly evil.

“I understand the Junior Physics Challenge went well. I saw the photo in the paper.”

“Oh, that! Yes. It was a great day and the kids were fantastic. All of them - the Starkiller kids did well too.”

“How magnanimous of you! I’m sure we’ll wrest the trophy from you another year. I hear you saw Ren last Friday.” As Rey’s eyes bugged at her in dismay, she shrugged. “I do kickboxing with Jessika Pava. She mentioned you danced together.”

Rey’s throat had closed up. “Yes,” she managed to say. “That is a thing that happened.”

“I wish I could have seen it! Ren dancing…” She shook her head, the look of amusement still there.

Bazine touched her wife’s elbow and murmured in an undertone, “They’re going in. On y va, Gwen?”

“J’arrive, cherie,” replied Ms Phasma in the same tone, then returned to Rey. “It’s good to see you again. Funny how we keep meeting. Enjoy the show.”

“You too,” said Rey again and sent Bazine a nervous smile. Were they friends now? Could she even be friends with someone from Starkiller? Her mind skittered to Kylo Ren and his messages lying unanswered in her WhatsApp inbox. But there was no time to dwell on that now, for she needed to pay for her programme and find a seat.

She found a free seat near the back of the hall, close to the end of a row and next to who she supposed were the proud parents of someone in the cast, fortunately nobody she had met before at a parents evening. Until the show started, she busied herself with reading the programme and the comically written biographies of the student actors, hiding from anyone else who might want to talk to her.

Then the lights dimmed, Rey shoved the programme in her handbag, and the band struck up the overture. Immediately, she felt a shiver pass through her as familiar music swirled around her and a spotlight lit up the stage and the Year 7 girl playing young Anastasia being given a musical box by her grandmother, played by a girl in Year 12 with a grey wig.

The magic gripped her and somehow, despite hearing it rehearsed on a daily basis from the Physics office, it was completely different seeing and hearing the finished show. The chorus filled the stage, bringing final night energy and confidence to " A Rumour in Saint Petersburg" _.  _ Rey watched with unadulterated delight, allowing herself to be transported to the world of the show while simultaneously impressed more than she had expected to be by the skill of the performance. The cast really was terrific.

As the first act progressed and Rey sank further into the fantasy, something else began to happen. She was not just transported to revolutionary Russia, she was transported back to being the little girl in an orphanage in Jakku, who had sat on a stained carpet and watched a scratchy VHS with wide eyes and impossible hopes. As Anastasia came to the front of the stage to sing “Once upon a December”, tears started into Rey’s eyes and she could almost smell the musty mix of disinfectant and damp of that games room. The teenager on stage blurred in her vision to the cartoon character and the sides of the stage became the static of a television set.

Her heart began to pound erratically and she found herself digging her nails into her arms, shifting uneasily in her chair. Any time soon one of the other kids would come in and laugh at her for watching something so childish, or Plutt’s heavy form would blot out all light in the doorway before pulling the plug on the TV and sending Rey scuttling across the floor, cringing in fear at his approach. How clear they seemed, how immediate in her memory, these things she avoided thinking about on a day to day basis!

With a wrench she came to herself, to see a boy known for being one of the school’s best singers, passionately singing the word “Still!” on a very high note in a song that was unfamiliar from the film, having somehow managed to miss several scenes. Rey’s hands were sweaty and her fingers were leaving bruises on her own arms. She glanced nervously at the people on either side of her, but they were both completely absorbed in the show. If they found the restless, anxious girl next to them annoying or even noticed her at all, they were too well-bred to show it.

Rey told herself to pull herself together, that she was being ridiculous, but the smell of the orphanage would not leave her or the vivid, unaccountable identification she felt in that moment with her younger self. Her stomach was fluttering in a way that felt half like nerves, half like she wanted to throw up. She was beginning to feel trapped in her chair. Surely it had to be the interval soon?

The back of the stage fluttered as a new background dropped down with somewhat clunky scene changing and the Eiffel Tower appeared. And then the music started again -

_ Heart don’t fail me now, courage don’t desert me  
_ _ Don’t back turn, now that we’re here.  
_ _ People always say “Life is full of choices”  
_ _ No-one ever mentions fear or how the world can seem so vast  
_ __ On a journey to the past!

“Oh no no no!” said Rey to herself as the sick feeling crawled up her throat. The tears came back into her eyes and her stomach dropped, devastation hitting once - twice - three times in a wave.

_ Home - love - family  
_ _ There was once a time when I must have had them too. _

But she hadn’t.

And oh, how much young Rey had wanted them! And how much she had followed Anastasia’s story with hope!

Hadn’t she fallen asleep night after night whispering the words of this song to herself as an anthem and a prayer? Hadn’t she kept positive and hopeful by humming the tune as she did whatever chores some grudging foster parent made her do?

_ One step at a time,  
_ _ One hope, then another,  
_ _ Who knows where this road may go   
_ _ Back to who I was,  
_ __ On to find my future.

But here she was, all grown up, and nothing to show for it. She still had no name of her own, no parents, no memories, and she was attending a school musical alone! What had it all been for? Everyone else knew who they were… everyone except her. She was still the same lost, little girl in the orphanage. A pathetic nobody whom nobody wanted.

On stage, Anastasia finished the song, beaming in triumph and hope as the curtain dropped. Applause rang out around Rey, as sharp as the crack of a gunshot. She viciously rubbed at her eyes in an attempt to get rid of the evidence of tears before the lights came up and she was one of the first to stand up, pushing past the two people on the end of the row with muttered apologies as she made a dash to the exit on legs that shook, pushing open the doors with hands that trembled.

She made a beeline to the toilets, getting there well before the interval rush. Alone once more under the glare of white lighting, Rey stopped to breathe, hunched over a sink. She managed to turn on the tap and splashed her face with cold water, wincing and shivering and blinking. 

_ Stop it stop it stop it,  _ she said to herself as she gripped the sides of the sink with both hands, really afraid she might collapse if she did not hold on. Her breathing was still coming shallowly so she splashed more water on her face to shock herself out of it. 

The bathroom door creaked as it was pushed open. Rey, afraid of being caught in such a state, made a dive for a cubicle and locked the door behind herself just in time.

“...really impressive performances,” a cultured female voice was saying. “Stacey is brilliant.”

“I really like the boy playing Gleb - he does such a good job making him sympathetic, and what a voice!” replied another woman.

A cubicle door slammed, then another.

Rey slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor. She buried her head in her arms on her knees, screwing her eyes shut and forcing herself to breathe.

_ In, out, in, out, one two three four five six seven eight nine ten… _

She couldn’t have a panic attack on the floor of the school public toilets, she simply  _ couldn’t _ .

The sound of flushing, cubicle doors opening, running water, the hand dryer going, someone else coming in and going into the next cubicle along. Rey forced herself to focus on these familiar sounds and routines. She raised her head from her arms and stared at her hands, still trembling slightly. Her fingernails were uneven and bitten, her fingers red and chapped from winter cold. She stared at them with peculiar intensity as if she had never seen them before.

The bathroom fell silent as the two women left. Rey waited a moment before getting carefully to her feet. She flushed the toilet for appearance’s sake and cautiously unlocked the cubicle door, peering out, but the coast was clear. Returning to the sink, still breathing deeply, she washed her hands thoroughly with warm water and soap, and only then raised her eyes to the mirror to assess the levels of damage.

Her eyes were red, her ill-judged attempts at make-up smudging but not in fact as bad as she had feared. To her own eyes, she looked afraid. She examined her appearance in a detached way, the glare of the fluorescent lighting revealing every feature.

“Who are you, Rey?” she whispered to herself. Where had she got those eyes, those lips, that nose, those freckles from? If she looked closely, could she see her parents and her origins in her own features? Which came from her mother, which from her father? Whose DNA flowed in her blood? How could anyone live and make anything of themselves without a past and a history? All the time as a teacher, she saw how a child’s family affected them, how the support or lack of it could make or break a pupil’s success. She often understood a child’s behaviour when she met their parents at parents evening. But what happened when there were no parents? When there was a void where parents ought to be? When there was nothing but a question mark? How did  _ that  _ affect a pupil’s progress? Perhaps they would just become a screw up like her. The face in the mirror frowned grimly back at her but provided no answers. She wanted to punch a hole in the perfect glass.

Then there was the sound of flushing, making Rey jump, and a cubicle door opened. Out walked a Year 8 girl, one of Rey’s students. She had dark hair scraped back in a ponytail and was wearing a fluffy pink jumper with a unicorn on it.

“Hi, Miss Smith!” the girl greeted her, with a perky smile.

Rey could not ignore someone she taught, no matter how she felt.

“Hi, Daisy.” She forced herself to steady her breathing and quickly clasped her hands behind her back in case they were still trembling. “Are you enjoying the show?”

“Oh yes,” replied Daisy happily, as she washed her hands. “It’s so great. My sister’s in the chorus, you know?”

“Oh yes? Well, tell your sister from me that the chorus sounds wonderful.”

“I will.” Daisy turned away from the sink and hesitated as if she wanted to say something more. Rey smiled wanly at her, wishing she would go away.

“Hey, miss,” the girl continued presently, glancing around to check they were alone. “You know… I wanted to say… I’m really enjoying Physics this year.”

Rey blinked. “You are?” She gave herself a mental shake. She really shouldn’t act so surprised! “That’s great to hear!”

“Yeah. I, um, I had Mr. Binks last year and, well, he was really weird and boring. I thought I didn’t like Physics, but, like, you make it really fun. And now I think I like Physics. It’s one of my favourite subjects.”

Something other than panic began to settle in Rey’s stomach and she once more felt like crying. “Thank you, Daisy. I’m glad you’re enjoying the lessons. You’ve been doing really good work this year; you’re making great progress. If you like the subject, I’m sure you could go far in it. Have you thought of coming along to Science Club?”

Daisy stared up at her, eyes wide and interested, and shook her head.

“Well, think about it.”

A brilliant smile shot across the girl’s face. “I will. Thank you, Miss Smith! Enjoy the rest of the show!” And she bounced out of the bathroom.

Rey drew a large breath. Who knew? Daisy was so quiet and hardly ever spoke up in class that, her good grades notwithstanding, she would never have put her down as someone who was keen on the subject. And yet she was. Somehow, somewhere along the way without even trying, Rey had made a difference to this one girl’s life and perception of her subject. Perhaps underneath the fluffy, pink unicorn jumper was a future Physicist. Perhaps this was what Rey was destined to do.

She left the bathroom slowly and made her way thoughtfully back to her seat in the hall. If she had been sensible, she would have simply got her bag and jacket and left at this point. One restorative encounter with a student did not make up for a week of stress and exhaustion and the trauma of the first half of the show. To go back inside and continue watching was a terrible idea and yet not one she questioned. The darkness outside seemed more terrible somehow than the buzzing, warm school hall and in a self-sabotaging way, she felt bound to stay and suffer for the sake of being able to tell Rose she had enjoyed the show and not having to explain to Finn why she had left early.

Besides, this time she was prepared. The lights dimmed and Rey was ready with arms folded and a grim expression on her face as if she was about to endure an extraction without anaesthetic at the dentist rather than watch some talented students act out a beloved musical.

There was no more panic in the second half. Rey simply felt drained and increasingly sad. She watched listlessly as Anastasia edged her way to understanding her past and falling in love with Dmitry. She shifted with a modicum of interest over Gleb’s doomed love for her, a storyline not in the original film, her sympathies shifting treacherously to this passionate and dangerous man. But mostly she blinked away more tears as she watched the show no longer through the hopeful eyes of a child but with the bleak pessimism of an adult whose fantasies had not been realised.

At the end of the show, she clapped along with the rest of the audience, put on her jacket, picked up her bag and made her way back into the entrance hall in a queue. There, she found herself unexpectedly face to face with Leia who insisted in catching her eye when all Rey wanted to do was to get away and be alone with her feelings.

Leia was cheerful and fully in professional mode as headmistress presiding over a great success.

“So glad you could come, Rey. What did you think?”

“It was great,” said Rey dully.

Leia’s sharp eyes missed nothing. She tilted her head. “Forgive me, are you alright? Is there anything I can do?”

She resisted rolling her eyes and made herself exert one final dreg of energy and positivity. “I’m fine. Just tired. It was an amazing production, truly.”

“It really was. I’m so glad they picked  _ Anastasia  _ this year. Between you and me, I wasn’t much of a fan of  _ Sweeney Todd  _ that they did last year - but of course you weren’t here then… But  _ Anastasia  _ is such a lovely story. I do like a fairytale!”

Rey shrugged, finding Leia’s enthusiasm annoying. “It’s not real though, is it? This story - it’s totally unrealistic. It’s too neat, too romantic, too many coincidences.”

“I don’t watch musicals for realism,” replied the headmistress in a gentler tone. “But you’ve got to have hope, right?”

Rey swallowed, another wave of sadness hitting her unexpectedly. “I don’t. Not any more. I - I have to go. Sorry.”

She pushed away through the crowd before Leia could answer, though she felt her gaze on her back as far as the door. She pulled it open, taking a deep breath of cold, sharp, winter air, a welcome relief after the stuffiness of the school, and ran quickly down the steps - into pouring rain.

This was no mere drizzle, this was a downpour. At some point during the evening, the wind had picked up and the heavens had opened. Now rain slanted down into Rey’s face as she stood in the car park, and bounced off the ground. Within seconds, she could feel the leather of her jacket begin to soften and escaping tendrils of hair stick to her neck. All the same, she felt freer than she had all evening and she tipped her head back and closed her eyes, letting the rain fall on her face. It fitted her mood, an unexpected but not unwelcome case of pathetic fallacy.

The car park was filling up with people leaving and Rey couldn’t stand there long. She went in search of her bike, now thoroughly wet with water streaming down her face and mingling with the dried tracks of earlier tears. She stood in a puddle and felt cold water seep into her socks but even that discomfort felt welcome, a reminder of life and pain. Her helmet was wet but she put it on anyway and she swung her leg over the bike, settling down onto a wet saddle. The key turned in the lock and the Millennium Falcon roared into life, a comforting sound. Rey revved it several times before driving out of the school car park and setting off for home down the dark suburban street.

But as she drove, blinking through the rain, she became filled with an urgent need to not go home. The prospect of a cold house, empty and dark in Finn’s absence, filled her with a new panic and misery. Abruptly, she turned down a side-street and accelerated quickly.

This was more like it! This was what she had done ever since she had first rescued the bike at the age of sixteen. There was no freedom greater than speeding through the streets, dodging potholes and rain drops, the wind whistling by her. She swerved through streets, half following a route, half just going wherever the road took her. After pursuing backstreets, she found herself at a familiar junction in the centre of town and took off towards the cathedral. At this time and in this weather all was quiet, despite it being a Friday night. On the cathedral green the wooden stalls for the Christmas market were all shut up and the only light came from the illumination of the cathedral façade and the string of lights on the large Christmas tree, its top swaying precariously in the wind. 

Along the high street, restaurants were still doing a booming trade in office Christmas parties. A few gaggles of people waited for taxis outside Cafe Rouge and Pizza Express, huddled together under umbrellas. The pub windows were steamed up but nobody lingered outside with a cigarette or plastic pint glass tonight. Tesco Express was open but nobody had ventured out in this weather for some late-night shopping.

Rey kept going through the maze of narrow streets in the old centre and shot out the other side of town through housing estates and beyond onto an A road leading off towards the next town along, the route in fact that Rey had taken the previous year to her old school, though she had hardly intended to follow a route she had not done in six months. The roads were quiet and Rey was able to pick up some real speed, though she was not so self-destructive as to drive dangerously on slippery roads. She was a good driver and knew how to calculate risks. 

Riding usually had a calming effect on her but it took Rey a long time to clear her mind. She had a great deal to work through and thoughts darted around her brain in an unstructured way along with snatches of songs from the show. She wanted to let go of it all, wanted to feel free of all the sickening realisations that were crowding in on her, thick and fast. She drove faster, leaning into the wind and rain, until abruptly it was too much. She was at a roundabout and she turned off the main road onto a small, country lane. A few metres down this was the gate to a field with a small area in front of it and Rey skidded to a halt here where she could park, and almost fell off the bike into the dark, no street lamps illuminating this obscure lane and the moon covered by thick cloud. 

The Millennium Falcon crashed to one side and Rey leaned forwards and gripped her knees, suddenly finding herself crying again. The rain pierced through jacket and jumper to her skin, she was standing in mud, a gust of wind whipped round her and she felt suddenly icy cold. Her jeans, already soaked through, were stiff and freezing. Trickles of water ran down her neck from the helmet and inside her collar. Something wild and irrepressible rose up within her and she howled, a wordless and inhuman shriek of despair caught and carried away by the wind into the silence of the night and drowned out by the rumble of distant traffic. She yelled until her throat was raw and she was once again reduced to stumbling, trembling, towards the gate. In the hedgerow nearby a snuffling sound came, along with a quiet, reflective moo. Startled, Rey turned and gripped the top bar of the gate and came face to face with a cow that loomed out of the darkness of the field beyond.

The cow stared at Rey out of large, brown eyes that didn’t display any resentment at being disturbed and Rey stared at the cow. For a long while, girl and animal sized each other up and then the cow huffed a stream of comfortable, warm air out of its nostrils and turned away, wandering away through the mud to the shelter of a nearby tree.

For the first time, Rey became aware of being utterly exhausted and extremely uncomfortable and wet. She swallowed, her throat unpleasantly rough, and pushed water and strands of hair away from her face. She stomped back over to the bike and pulled it upright, brushing mud away from the handlebars. 

“I’m sorry,” she said round yet more tears. “I’m sorry I pushed you to the ground. Are you okay? You’re all I’ve got, you stupid piece of junk.” The bike, of course, made no answer, but Rey carefully climbed back on and tested the ignition. No harm done and the sound of its familiar roar comforted her immensely. “Come on,” she said gently. “Let’s go.” She patted and stroked its old body. “You and me, Falcon, it’s you and me, just like always.”

She could not have been more tender if it had been a pet or a child. And well it might have been, for the Millennium Falcon had been brought back to life at Rey’s hands and been a secret, prized possession when she truly had had nothing else.

She set off again, away from the gate and the strangeness of her encounter with the cow, at a more moderate pace this time. Who knew shrieking was so tiring? She felt drained of all energy, barely able to hold onto the handlebars and keep going. She had to go home… she had to get dry and warm… and eat something. Yes, by God, she was hungry! It felt a long time since the macaroni cheese she had heated up before the theatre. But still the prospect of the dark and empty house held little appeal. But it could not be helped.

She re-entered the town at a different angle, not one she was very familiar with. Along the road, modern housing estates had sprung up in the last few years. New sets of traffic lights stopped her, at junctions to new roads leading into new mini villages and shiny blocks of flats. She passed the usual row of supermarkets - a large Waitrose sharing a car park with a park and ride stop, a PC World with its neon sign still glowing and a grim looking Premier Inn with its accompanying chain pub. For a moment, she toyed with the fantasy of simply stopping there and crashing out for the night in an anonymous hotel room. Put off going home until the morning when things would seem brighter. But that was completely unrealistic: she had no pyjamas, no toothpaste and she did not have the kind of money to justify such a pointless expense. So she drove on, increasingly aware of her surroundings as if awakening from a long sleep and taking in these unfamiliar signs of modern Alderaan with interest.

Finally, she came to the end of the new buildings. She was stopped by a traffic light and could see beyond the junction that she had reached the beginning of old Alderaan. Dark chrome, brick and shadowy glass turned abruptly into Victorian terraces, interspersed with even older buildings, black and white Tudor walls bulging randomly over the pavement. But it was not the architecture that caught Rey’s eye. For in the next block along from where she had stopped, a pub sign swung in the wind and she could see welcoming golden light in its windows and even smoke rising from the chimney suggesting a real log fire inside. It was a while since she had seen so promising a sign of life and it called to her with the siren song of food, drink, warmth and light. Right on cue, Rey’s stomach rumbled. The traffic light turned from red to green and her mind was made up.

It was a real, old-fashioned pub in a seventeenth century building nestled between an estate agent’s and a dry cleaner’s. A passage down the side led to the car park and Rey drove carefully down it, found a space to park and left her bike and helmet there. The smell from the kitchens at the back suggested they were still serving food and Rey took off to the entrance with a much lighter step.

She glanced up at the sign over the door. A painting of a grim-faced nun in a wimple looked down at her, along with the name of the pub: The Old Abbess.

_ Well, here goes nothing,  _ Rey muttered to herself, beyond caring about the kind of woe-be-gone appearance she must make, and pushed open the door, shivering as she stepped inside and away from the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Really, this chapter and the next come as a pair and I will get writing that quickly, it's one I've been looking forward to for a while...
> 
> As ever, comments are very much appreciated and you can find me on tumblr at [@bathshebaeverdenes](http://bathshebaeverdenes.tumblr.com/).


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